President Trump repeated his threat to close the US border with Mexico yesterday, telling reporters attending a Q&A he held alongside Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg that he priorities security over trade.
Urging Mexico to do more to tackle the “crisis” of illegal immigration on its side of the fence, the president said: “Let’s see if they keep it done. Now, if they don’t, or if we don’t make a deal with Congress, the border’s going to be closed, 100 percent.”
He also said that he might only close “large sections of the border” and “not all of it”, a significant climb-down, adding his posturing was “the only way we’re getting a response.”
But senior Republicans are a good deal less keen on the idea than the president, economists warning the measure would block 15,000 trucks and $1.6bn (£1.2bn) in goods crossing the border every day.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said yesterday: “Closing down the border would have potentially catastrophic economic impact on our country and I would hope we would not be doing that sort of thing.”
Officials across the Trump administration are meanwhile understood to be exploring half-measures that might satisfy the president’s urge for drastic action, like stopping only foot traffic at certain crossings, rather than going through with a full shutdown.
Later on Tuesday, homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen held an emergency call with Cabinet members and White House aides, reportedly declaring, “We are going to treat it as if we have been hit by a Category 5 hurricane.”
Nielsen was creating an emergency operations centre and named US Border Patrol official Manny Padilla as an operational crisis coordinator to manage the response from within the different immigration agencies at the Department of Homeland Security. Padilla is a 30-year Border Patrol veteran and was recently the head of the Rio Grande Valley Sector in Texas.
His job will be different from that of the immigration or “border czar” that Trump is apparently considering appointing.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow in turn told CNBC he’s been looking at alternatives to shutting the border, including potentially keeping truck lanes open.
“We are looking at different options, particularly if you can keep those freight lanes, the truck lanes, open,” he said. As for the hundreds of thousands of tourists and workers who cross the border legally, Kudlow said, “that may be difficult.”
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