US president Donald Trump asserted on Sunday that immigrants who cross into the United States illegally should be sent back immediately without due process or an appearance before a judge, an escalation of his attacks on the judicial system.
“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,” Mr Trump tweeted while on the way to his golf course in Virginia. “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came.”
It was another twist in an already head-spinning series of developments on immigration after the president reversed a policy last week that had resulted in the separation of more than 2,300 children from their families. While in Las Vegas on Saturday, Mr Trump told supporters he thought the immigration system needed fewer judges, putting him in conflict with a proposal by Texas senator Ted Cruz to expand the number of judges in an effort to process cases more quickly.
Wonder is he as meticulous about hygiene inside the cages his government locks migrant children in https://t.co/NeTARNje8w
— Allison Morris (@AllisonMorris1) June 25, 2018
....Our Immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, is very unfair to all of those people who have gone through the system legally and are waiting on line for years! Immigration must be based on merit - we need people who will help to Make America Great Again!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2018
We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order. Most children come without parents...
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2018
Mr Trump also suggested last week that he opposed adding judges because many of them could be corrupt. He has criticised immigration judges for weeks, saying they were not effective in stopping the flow of people coming into the country, sometimes using incorrect numbers to make his point.
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“We have thousands of judges. Do you think other countries have judges?” Mr Trump said during a round-table discussion in May. “We give them, like, trials. That’s the good news. The bad news is, they never show up for the trial. Okay?” There are actually fewer than 400 judges dedicated to such work, according to the website PolitiFact.
Executive order
Last week, the president found himself on the defensive over his hardline immigration stance, signing an executive order on Wednesday reversing his family separation policy that instead seeks to detain children with their families. Federal officials are struggling to reunite children with their relatives as legislators in Congress grapple over potential fixes.
The call to abandon due process in some ways echoed part of Mr Trump’s executive order, which seeks to detain immigrant families indefinitely, a stance that courts have said violates the rights of the children. But on Sunday Mr Trump went further, saying no judges at all were needed to process immigration cases. “Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order,” Mr Trump said, adding: “Our Immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, is very unfair to all of those people who have gone through the system legally and are waiting on line for years! Immigration must be based on merit.” – New York Times