WASHINGTON | Thousands of U.S. troops shipped to stop an “invading caravan” of migrants. Tent cities cobbled together for asylum seekers. An end for the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.
President Donald Trump is rushing out hardline immigration declarations, promises and actions as he looks to mobilize supporters to retain Republican control of Congress ahead of next week’s midterm elections. His own campaign in 2016 focused on border fears, and that’s his final-week focus in the midterm fight.
“This has nothing to do with elections,” the president insists. But his timing is striking.
Trump proclaimed he will send more than 5,000 military troops to the Mexican border to help defend against caravans of Central American migrants who are on foot more than 500 miles away. Tent cities would not resolve the massive U.S. backlog of asylum seekers. And most legal scholars argue that it would take a new constitutional amendment to alter the current one granting citizenship to anyone born in America.
Still, Trump steamrolls ahead with daily proclamations about immigration in tweets, interviews and policy announcements in the days leading up to elections that Democrats hope will give them at least partial control of Congress.
Trump and many top aides have long seen the immigration issue as the most effective rallying cry for his base of supporters. The president had been expected to make an announcement about new actions at the border on Tuesday, but that was scrapped so he could travel instead to Pittsburgh, where 11 people were massacred in a synagogue on Saturday.