Those families at the border? Trump says they're "very bad people"
by digby
Trump's going back to his greatest hits, this time trying to cast Democrats as getting ready to open the border so all those criminals can come flooding in and kill you:
Lesser politicians merely exaggerate or spread fear about what the opposing party would do if they took power in Congress. President Donald Trump is inventing specific pieces of legislation.
Trump’s now rallying supporters by warning them that if Democrats take back the Senate, they’ll pass a bill written by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) called the “Open Borders Bill.”
No such bill actually exists.
Here’s what Trump told a rally audience in Topeka, Kansas, on Saturday:
"Today’s Democrats have embraced radical socialism and open borders. If you don’t have borders, you don’t have a country, folks, you don’t have a country. Every single Democrat in the US Senate has signed up for the Open Borders — and it’s a bill! It’s called the Open Borders Bill! What’s going on? And it’s written by — guess who — Dianne Feinstein."
They want to lock her up too, you'll recall.
The true story is that there is an immigration bill that Democrats signed on to aimed at preventing family separation. It was poorly drafted and would have made it difficult for any undocumented immigrant with a child to be arrested for anything, even a felony, which wasn't the intention.
Also somebody forgot to tell Trump and his followers that as president he would have to sign that bill for it to become law. So no boogeymen will be allowed to kill all those scared Trump voters in their beds unless he allows it.
By the way, "changing immigrant detention policy as a way to deter undocumented people from coming to the U.S. is illegal, federal courts have repeatedly ruled."
Here's Trump yesterday:
President Donald Trump confirmed on Saturday that he is considering a new family separation policy at the US-Mexico border because he believes the administration's earlier move to separate migrant children from parents was an effective deterrent to illegal crossings.
Asked to respond to a report in The Washington Post that the administration is weighing a new family-separation policy, Mr Trump told reporters, "We're looking at everything that you could look at when it comes to illegal immigration."
Mr Trump said the soaring number of illegal border crossings is "a terrible situation" and argued that family separations likely would help scare away some undocumented migrants from trying to enter the United States.
"If they feel there will be separation, they won't come," Mr Trump said.
Mr Trump made his comments to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before boarding Marine One for his trip to Kentucky, where he was scheduled to headline an evening campaign rally.
Mr Trump attributed the rise in illegal border crossings to the robust economy.
"We have people that are trying to get into our country because of how well our country is doing," Mr Trump said. "You know, in the old days, when the country wasn't doing well, it was a lot easier. Now everybody wants to come in, and they come in illegally, and they use children. In many cases, the children aren't theirs. They grab them, and they want to come in with the children."
The president later added: "You have really bad people coming in and using people. They're not their children. They don't even know the children. They haven't known the children for 20 minutes. And they grab children and they use them to come into our country."<
In August the country saw a 38 per cent increase in the number of migrants arrested and charged with illegally crossing the border, Department of Homeland Security officials said.
Trump could not care less whether the courts have said you can't change immigration law to "deter" immigrants. He's going to do it.
You know where this is heading.
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