'It's like Disneyland now!' Trump says the border region looks like an amusement park since America stopped separating migrant families, because 'ten times' more people are trying to cross over from Mexico
- President Trump says so many families are sneaking into the U.S. since the end of a policy separating children from adults that 'it's like Disneyland'
- Court orders keep the U.S. from housing illegal immigrant children more than 20 days in custody
- Existing laws and regulations prohibit housing most children in the same facilities as detained adults
- The resulting conflict forces the release of the children and the men and women who bring them into the U.S., pending court hearings that many of them skip
- Trump wants Congress to change the laws but Democrats are resistant
President Donald Trump said Sunday that a flood of family units streaming into the U.S. from Mexico has made the border region look like an amusement park.
The administration recently stopped its earlier practice at the border of separating adults without documents from children they bring into the U.S. The policy was meant to comply with a court ruling that required the government to house children it apprehended, and with existing law that prohibits keeping them in the same facility as adults.
But with dwindling bed space a constant issue, and a court ruling that limits children's detention to 20 days, that practice has largely ended – resulting the president said in a Fox News Channel interview, in a carnival-like flood of children traveling north into America.
'We go out and we stop the separation,' he recounted. 'The problem is you have ten times more people coming up with their families. It's like Disneyland now.'
President Donald Trump, pictured Saturday night at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, said in a Fox News Channel interview Sunday morning that so many children have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months that 'it's like Disneyland now'
The president signed an executive order last year ending the practice of separating children and adults at the border following a public outcry, attempting to put pressure on Congress to change federal law
This image, shot last Wednesday in El Paso, Texas, shows migrant children from different Latin American countries resting on cots inside a shelter after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released them because of a lack of government bed space
Not exactly: Trump's claim of a Disneyland-like border doesn't mad egovernment detention anything like the 'Happiest Place on Earth'; the president's claim is that sheer numbers of children are more than the government's system can handle
'When they used to separate children, which was done during the Obama administration, with Bush, with us, with everybody, far fewer people would come,' he said.
Trump painted the policy of family separation and its practical consequences as a matter of incentives, suggesting that Central Americans would typically say, 'Let's not go up.'
'Now you don't get separated, and you know, while that sounds nice and all, what happens is you have literally ten times more families coming up because they're not going to be separated from their children. So it turned out to be a disincentive that's obviously a disaster,' he said.
The president participated in an interview via telephone with Maria Bartiromo on her Fox News Channel show 'Morning Futures'
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Trump also complained about a court backlog of 900,000 cases that has turned immigration proceedings into a farce that requires an endless supply of specialized legal expertise in order to protect the country.
'We know where everybody is and we're moving people out so fast. The problem is we have to register them, we have to bring them to court,' he said.
'And another country just says, "Sorry, you can't come into our country," and they walk them out. In our country you have to bring them to court and you have to have Perry Mason involved.'
El Paso is relying on churches for help housing migrants including children
Families that cross the U.S. border near McAllen, Texas are taken into custody, but those from Central America are ultimately released into the U.S. pending court hearings that many skip
'It just a system that Congress can fix,' he vented, adding that lawmakers 'don't get off their ass. And it's the Democrats who could solve it so quickly.'
The president appeared on 'Morning Futures' with host Maria Bartiromo.
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said on the same program that 'if a family comes here with a minor child we'll release the entire family after 20 days because we don't have bed space.'
Graham also noted that a quirk in U.S. immigration law treats Mexican and Canadian border-jumpers differently from people who are citizens of Central American countries.
'If you're from Central America you cannot be sent back home as a minor child because of the law on the books that prohibits sending children back from non-contiguous countries,' he said.
'We need to be sending these kids back to Central America where they come from.'
