Trump to deploy National Guard to secure border with Mexico

April 05, 2018 09:30

United States President Donald Trump will sign an executive order asking the National Guard to secure his country's border with Mexico so as to immediately prevent caravans of illegal immigrants crossing into America.

"The threat is real," Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told reporters at a White House news conference.

"We continue to see unacceptable levels of illegal drugs, dangerous gang activity, transnational criminal organisations and illegal immigration flow across our border," she said.

"This threatens not only the safety of American communities and children but also the very rule of law, on which, the country was founded. It's time to act. So let's talk a little bit about that today," she said.

"In an effort to prevent such a consequence, the president has directed that the Department of Defence and the Department of Homeland Security work together with our governors to deploy the National Guard to our southwest border to assist the Border Patrol," she said.

Nielson asserted that Trump would sign a proclamation to that effect today.

"It's time to act," she added.

In the last 15 months, she said, the Trump administration has taken major steps to methodically strengthen border security.

"We stepped up the targeting of dangerous criminal gangs such as MS-13, we removed thousands more criminal aliens than the year prior, we no longer exempt entire classes of illegal aliens from the consequences of breaking our immigration laws," she said.

"We began the first new border wall system construction in close to a decade, we modified our asylum system processing to more quickly adjudicate claims and we ended so-called temporary immigration programs that were either constitutionally dubious or were administered in a manner that was inconsistent with the purpose of the law or contrary to the intent of Congress," Nielson said. -- PTI

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