US risks being ‘overrun’ sans ‘strong’ borders, says Trump

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump defended his immigration policies at an event in Nevada aimed at boosting the prospects of a Republican senator facing a difficult re-election fight, saying that without a tough stance on the border the US would be “overrun.”
Trump held a closed-door fundraiser in the Las Vegas area for Senator Dean Heller, and afterward addressed the Nevada Republican Party Convention. He was next scheduled to attend a tax-focussed event, six months after the passage of major tax-cutting legislation.
“On immigration, we have to be very strong,” Trump said. “We’re being very tough at the border.”
If the US shows any “weakness,” he said, “we will be overrun.” “If I got up here today and said ‘we want everybody to come,’ we would have millions and million of people pouring throughout our country,” Trump said.
The trip comes as Trump’s administration is reeling from chaos caused by a policy of separating children from their parents who illegally cross the US border from Mexico.
“We do a much better job while at the same time maintaining a MUCH stronger Border!” Trump said earlier in a Twitter message before boarding Air Force One, comparing his administration’s policies to that of the Obama administration. Trump also retweeted a link to his weekly address slamming “Democrat-supported loopholes” on immigration law.
The president went further in his speech, linking support for Democratic candidates to support for Latin gangs like MS-13. A vote for Democrats is “really a vote for crime,” Trump said.
The president appeared to reverse the controversial family-separation policy earlier this week after outcry from the public and bipartisan backlash from lawmakers. He signed an executive order that he said would end family separations, but his administration has struggled to explain what will happen to more than 2,300 children already separated from their
parents.
Multiple inquiries into the White House and the Department of Homeland Security have been met with silence.
Trump added to the turmoil, though, with a tweet urging Republican lawmakers to stop “wasting their time” by trying to pass an immigration bill until after the November elections. He said a “Red Wave” of Republicans winning in the mid-terms would help bolster his Congressional majorities, despite public polling that indicates otherwise.
Trump’s visit to Nevada is aimed at protecting the Republican senator seen most at risk of losing his seat to a Democrat this fall. Trump’s focus on his immigration policies come as he heads to a state with a heavy concentration of Latino voters.

US is reuniting immigrant families
Bloomberg

The Trump administration announced a series of steps to reunite families that had been separated at the border under a now-abandoned policy as it reported 522 children so far have been returned to their families.
The statement set out a process for divided family members to locate one another following days of
confusion about how the administration would reunite children taken from caregivers under Trump’s “zero tolerance” approach towards border crossings.
It wasn’t clear how many of the 522 children had been reunited with parents or guardians since Trump announced that the government would no longer separate families. Nor was it clear whether any immigrant children who had been transferred to the US Health and Human Services Department for longer-term custody had yet rejoined their families. The border patrol took 2,342 children from their parents from May 5 to June 9.