President Trump said Tuesday he would not relaunch his much-maligned policy of separating children from their families at the southern border.
“We’re not looking to do that now. But when you don’t do it, it brings a lot more people to the border,” he said during an Oval Office sit-down with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, his second White House visit since Trump took office.
But even as he disavowed it, he defended it, arguing that it was an effective deterrent to asylum-seeking migrants.
“I’ll tell you something, once you don’t have it that’s why you have many more people coming. They are coming like it’s a picnic, like ‘Let’s go to Disneyland,” Trump said.
The president’s remarks on family separations contradicted multiple reports that he wanted the policy revived and even strengthened.
Trump also angrily blamed ex-President Obama for the controversy over the policy, which he ended with an executive order after courts ruled against it, repeating that it was him, and not Trump, who launched the policy.
“Just so you understand, President Obama separated the children. Those cages that were shown — I think they were very inappropriate — were by President Obama’s administration not by Trump. President Obama had child separation,” he said, referring to steel cages at a border detention facility that children were kept in.
“Take a look. The press knows it. You know it. We all know it. I’m the one who stopped it. President Obama had child separation,” he continued.
He then slammed Democrats and illegal immigration in general.
“We want homeland security and that’s what we’re gonna get,” he declared.
Asked about the forced departure of Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen and other changes at DHS, the president denied that he was “cleaning house.”
“I never said I’m cleaning house. We’ve got a lot of great people over there,” he said, blaming bad laws, Congress and judges for interfering with his immigration agenda.
The number of asylum seeking Central American families being apprehended at the border has soared to the highest levels in a decade — with an expected 100,000 detained in March alone.
Trump largely blamed Nielsen for the surge.
El- Sisis sat smiling during the president’s comments.
The two leaders were expected to discuss security, the economy and human rights, according to a senior administration official who spoke to reporters before the visit.
The official said that Trump and al-Sisi — a hardliner accused by human rights groups of widespread abuses, including torture — had a “warm and personal” dynamic.
The official said Team Trump was also “quite concerned” about Russia expanding its footprint in the volatile region, and described the country as an untrustworthy partner.
“We don’t see a lot of material benefits to engagements with the Russians. You can look at Syria and see how that’s going, might also point you to Venezuela,” the official said.
“So, if you’re Egypt, hopefully, you would at that and think maybe we don’t want to go down that road, maybe we’d like to go down the road of support and investment from the United States.”
The official added that the administration had “long argued that Russia is not a reliable partner for weapon sales,” referring to Egypt’s deals to buy military hardware from the Russians.
With Post wires