Trump: ‘No approvals from me’ on immigration bill unless it improves a ‘real wall’
President Trump in an interview broadcast early Thursday dismissed the possibility of an immigration bill being signed into law that does not include improvements to a “real” border wall with Mexico.
In an interview with “Fox & Friends,” the president touted four immigration bills currently being discussed by lawmakers, before warning that none of them would obtain his signature without proper funding for border security.
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“We’re doing a lot of work on security, generally speaking, security and border — border security. [Border crossings are] down over 40 percent,” Trump said. “So people come across, but we’re going to get the rest. I think there’s a lot of pressure on the Democrats to get it approved, frankly, and also to change the immigration laws to toughen them up a lot.”
“Unless it improves a wall, and I mean a wall, a real wall, and unless it improves very strong border security, there’ll be no approvals from me, because I have to either approve it or not,” he added.
The president said only that he favors “one or two” of the plans currently being discussed in Congress.
Trump and Congress have been at a stalemate over immigration and border security since last year, when Trump announced he would end the Obama-era protections for immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children.
Federal judges have since ruled against the Trump administration, forcing the White House to keep the program running while Congress debates a permanent fix for the nearly 2 million “Dreamers” affected by the president’s decision.
The White House has condemned decisions by judges to keep the program open in the meantime, calling them an overreach into federal authority.
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