Trump vowed US will not become migrant camp
19 June, 2018
President Donald Trump vowed Monday that the United States would not become a “migrant camp,” as he faced soaring pressure to end the separation of immigrant families on America’s southern border.
While top administration officials stood by Trump’s policy of “zero tolerance” towards unauthorized border crossers, and insisted children were being held in humane conditions, criticism swelled from rights groups and within the president’s own Republican Party.
With the US border crisis shaping up as a critical challenge of his presidency, Trump stood defiant even as Democratic lawmakers accused authorities of keeping children in “cages” separate from their incarcerated parents and Amnesty International likened the practice to “torture.”
“The United States will not be a migrant camp, and it will not be a refugee holding facility,” Trump said at the White House.
“You look at what’s happening in Europe, you look at what’s happening in other places, we can’t allow that to happen to the United States,” he said. “Not on my watch.”
On the home front, Trump has said he wants family separations to end, but has refused to take responsibility — instead blaming Democrats, the minority party in Congress, for blocking legislation on the broader issue of illegal immigration.
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