Former President Donald Trump declared in a statement that “The United States will soon be considered a Third World Nation. There has never been anything like what is happening at our border. Millions of people have already poured in, but many more than that are coming!”
The statement echoed a previous message in which he stated, “Our country is rapidly becoming a cesspool of humanity.”
He continued saying “murderers, drug dealers, and criminals” were migrating across the U.S. southern border in droves from South America, Africa, Haiti, and other countries.
Haitians began arriving at the border after the assassination of the Haitian president on July 7, followed by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake on August 14. The quake damaged or destroyed more than 100,000 houses, injured over 12,000 people, and killed almost 2,200 people.
Trump issued his most recent comments as thousands of Haitian migrants arrived seeking refuge at the southern U.S. border. The Biden administration reversed several border policies the Trump administration put in place almost immediately after Biden was inaugurated in January.
Critics have blamed the administration for the policy, saying it caused an unmanageable surge of migrants crossing the border.
In July alone more than 200,000 migrants crossed the southern border, setting a new record for a one-month period. The number is more than three times the number during Trump’s time in office.
Homeland chief: ‘Border is closed’
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters that the Biden administration is “very concerned the Haitians who are taking this irregular migration path are receiving false information that the border is open or that temporary protected status is available.
“I want to make sure that it is known that this is not the way to come to the U.S. That is false information.”
Additionally, Mayorkas said the Biden administration has increased deportation efforts and the Department of Homeland Security would increase flights to Haiti to reduce poor living conditions and immigrant crowding on the border.
Mayorkas insisted the administration was ramping up its efforts as thousands of migrants swamped the Texas border city of Del Rio.
U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said that the increasing volume of border crossings in Del Rio could have resulted from social media postings and word-of-mouth information that the border is “open.”
Twenty-six Republican governors recently sent a letter to Biden requesting a meeting to discuss a “national security crisis” on the southern border.
The letter stated that all of the “illegal crossings” are the cause of “a spike in international criminal activity, and opened the floodgates to human traffickers and drug smugglers endangering public health and safety in our states.”
The letter was signed by all Republican governors except Vermont Phil Scott.
The governors’ letter also stated that “a crisis that began at our southern border now extends beyond to every state and requires immediate action before the situation worsens.”
Prior to the governors’ letter, a group of 50 congressional Democrats sent a letter to Secretary Mayorkas discouraging the deportation of the Haitian migrants.
One of the lead authors of the Democrat statement, Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, said, “The Biden administration cannot claim it is doing everything it can to support the Haitian community while continuing to unjustly deport Haitians as the island weathers its worst political, public health and economic crises yet.”
