Former United States president Donald Trump pledged to “seal” the Mexico-U.S. border and “stop the invasion” of migrants to the U.S. during a visit to a section of border wall in Arizona on Thursday.
During a press conference in Cochise County on the border between Arizona and Sonora, the Republican Party presidential nominee also promised to impose the death penalty on large-scale drug traffickers if he is elected on Nov. 5.
🚨Trump unveils new border crime policies
-10 year mandatory minimum sentence for anyone guilty of human smuggling
-Mandatory life sentence for anyone guilty of child trafficking
-Death penalty for anyone guilty of sex trafficking
-Death penalty on major drug dealers and… pic.twitter.com/FSAZga7Y7s
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) August 22, 2024
Speaking just hours before Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Trump took aim at his opponent, accusing her of failing in her position as “border czar” and asserting that she wants to have an “open border.”
“When we win this November we will end the Kamala Harris border nightmare once and for all,” he said.
“… With your vote we will seal the border, stop the invasion and launch the largest deportation effort in American history,” said Trump, who was accompanied by mothers of children killed during the Biden administration in cases where the suspects are illegal immigrants.
He claimed that Harris would allow “more than 100 million illegal aliens into our country” if elected president. He also asserted that the United States would be “overrun” by migrants “and essentially won’t be a country.”
If reelected — eight years after defeating Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election — Trump said his government “will impose tough new sentences on illegal alien criminals.”
“These include 10-year mandatory minimum sentences for anyone guilty of human smuggling, a guaranteed life sentence for anyone guilty of child trafficking and a death penalty for anyone guilty of child or women sex trafficking,” he said.
“We’ll also impose the death penalty on major drug dealers and traffickers,” Trump added.
If his rhetoric were to become reality, Mexicans facing drug charges in the United States, such as alleged Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, could be subject to capital punishment.
The situation at the border
During Joe Biden’s presidency, new records have been set for migrant arrivals at the border and illegal crossings into the United States, but numbers have trended down this year.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered a record high of almost 2.5 million migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2023, which ended last September.
Illegal crossings hit a single-month high of almost 250,000 last December, but the number of encounters with migrants between ports of entry fell to 56,408 last month — a 77.4% decline from the record high.
Data shows that illegal crossings into the U.S. from Mexico declined during five consecutive months between March and July, but the biggest drops came after Biden issued an executive order in early June that prevents migrants from making asylum claims at the U.S.-Mexico border at times when crossings between legal ports of entry surge.
Encounters with migrants between ports of entry declined 29% in June compared to May, falling to 83,536 — the lowest level since January 2021.
In July, the number of illegal crossings detected by U.S. authorities declined 32.5% from June to reach the lowest level since September 2020.
Biden’s executive order — described by The New York Times as “the most restrictive border policy instituted by Mr. Biden, or any other modern Democrat” — has clearly contributed to the decline in illegal crossings in recent months. Still, enforcement against migrants in Mexico has also helped to reduce the number of people arriving at the country’s northern border.
Hundreds of thousands of foreigners detected traveling in Mexico without entry authorization have been taken to immigration detention centers this year, while others have been rounded up in different parts of the country and transported back to cities in southern Mexico, including Tapachula, Chiapas. That city is located just north of the border with Guatemala, where many migrants first enter Mexico.
Some migrants “have been punted back” to southern Mexico “as many as six times,” the Associated Press reported in June.
Data from the National Immigration Institute shows that Venezuelans made up the largest cohort of irregular migrants in Mexico in the first five months of the year, followed by Guatemalans, Hondurans, Ecuadorians and Haitians.
Harris: “I fought against the cartels who traffic in guns and drugs and human beings”
During her National Democratic Convention speech on Thursday night, Kamala Harris highlighted her experience as a prosecutor and pledged to “bring back the bipartisan border security bill” that Donald Trump “killed.”
“I fought against the cartels who traffic in guns and drugs and human beings — [the cartels] who threaten the security of our border and the safety of our communities,” the vice president said while recalling her work as a young courtroom prosecutor in Oakland, California.
“And I will tell you, these fights were not easy,” Harris said.
Later in her address, she said that she and Biden “brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades.”
“The border patrol endorsed it. But Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign, so he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal,” Harris said.
“Well, I refuse to play politics with our security, and here is my pledge to you. As president, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law,” said the Democratic Party nominee.
“I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system. We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border,” Harris said.
The bipartisan border bill was blocked in the Senate in February after Trump encouraged Republicans to oppose it. The bill failed to advance for a second time in May.
It included over US $20 billion for border security, according to a White House fact sheet published in February.
“The agreement would provide critical resources at the border and significant policy changes,” the White House said, highlighting Border Patrol and asylum reforms, among others.
Mexico News Daily
