Trump: ‘Any Deaths at the Border Are Strictly the Fault of the Democrats’

President Donald Trump on Dec. 29 placed the blame for any deaths at the southern border squarely on the Democrats.

“Any deaths of children or others at the Border are strictly the fault of the Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make the long trek thinking they can enter our country illegally. They can’t. If we had a Wall, they wouldn’t even try!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

“The two children in question were very sick before they were given over to Border Patrol. The father of the young girl said it was not their fault, he hadn’t given her water in days. Border Patrol needs the Wall and it will all end. They are working so hard and getting so little credit!”

The president has been trying to negotiate with Democrats to include funding for the border wall with the government budget.

The standoff has resulted in a partial government shutdown.

Democrat leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), voted for legislation authorizing hundreds of miles of barriers along the border in 2006 during the Bush administration, but have switched their stance since then. Many also voted in 2013, during the Obama administration, for a bill that called for 700 miles of fencing along the border.

Trump’s barbed missive came after two Guatemalan children died after crossing the border and being apprehended by Customs and Border Protection personnel.

A 7-year-old girl who was with her father was rushed to the hospital in New Mexico via air ambulance but died, likely of septic shock, officials said in mid-December.

A closed sign in front of the National Archives Museum in Washington on Dec. 28, 2018, during the partial government shutdown. (Holly Kellum/NTD)

Jakelin Caal’s father had signed a government form hours earlier stating that his daughter was in good condition. Officials said she hadn’t been given food or water for days, an assertion that the father disputed.

An 8-year-old boy died in a hospital in New Mexico on Dec. 25.

His father specifically brought his son with him because he heard a rumor that adults with children had an easier time getting into the United States.

Neither of the children would have qualified for asylum. Both families said they left Guatemala due to poverty, which isn’t one of the accepted parameters for migrants seeking asylum.

Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol, and White House officials have urged parents to stop taking their children on the dangerous trek from Central America to the United States.

Felipe Gomez Alonzo, the 8-year-old Guatemalan boy who died in New Mexico on Dec. 25, 2018, in a file photo near Laguna Brava in Yalambojoch, Guatemala. (Catarina Gomez via AP)

“No one should risk injury, or even death, by crossing our border unlawfully,“ Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said in a statement. ”This is why I asked Congress on Tuesday to change our laws so that the United States is not incentivizing families to take this dangerous path.”

“It’s a horrific, tragic situation," deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley told reporters on the White House lawn after the first death. “Our hearts go out to the family and to anyone who’s suffered any type of danger and peril that they see so often when they make that trek up from the southern border.”

“It’s a sad time, but it’s also senseless. It’s a needless death and it’s 100 percent preventable,” he added.

“If we could just come together and pass some common sense laws to disincentivize people from coming up from the border and encourage them to do it the right way, the legal way, then those types of deaths, those types of assaults, those types of rapes, the child smuggling, the human trafficking, that would all come to an end. And we hope Democrats join the president.”

From NTD News