Maxine Waters: Parts of Trump immigration plan are ‘very racist’

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) on Friday slammed President Trump’s new immigration plan, calling it “very racist.”

“There should be comprehensive immigration reform,” she said on CNN’s “New Day.”

She added that an immigration overhaul should not be “based on exciting and inciting those people who have negative thoughts about others coming across our border, and basically working to use that information to promote himself in a campaign. And I think some of that is very racist.”

Parts of President Trump’s newly unveiled immigration plan are “very racist,” @RepMaxineWaters tells @johnberman.

“It is not keeping with what this country is supposed to be all about,” she says. https://t.co/BujrwCCgHB pic.twitter.com/fUAYZJDEWm

— New Day (@NewDay) May 17, 2019

Waters said Trump’s plan, which calls for the United States to embrace a “pro-American” and “merit-based” immigration system that favors skilled workers over immigrants with family members in the country, is “not keeping with what this country is supposed to be all about.”

{mosads}“All of those things are not keeping in step with the way we treat human beings,” she said. “Asylum, those people whose lives are threatened — all these things should be taken into consideration.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Waters joins other Democratic lawmakers, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.), in bashing the proposal, which has slim chances of passing in Congress.

Shortly after the president announced his plan on Thursday, Pelosi said it was “dead on arrival” and “not a remotely serious proposal.”

Hoyer said Trump was promoting “xenophobic and false stereotypes about immigrants from certain parts of the world.”