President Trump said Wednesday his administration could deploy up to 15,000 service members to help stop a caravan of migrants from entering the United States.
“As far as the caravan is concerned, our military is out. We have about 5,000—we’ll go up to anywhere between 10 and 15,000 military personnel on top of Border Patrol, [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], and everybody else at the border,” the president told reporters at the White House before departing for Florida. “Nobody is coming in. We’re not allowing people to come in.”
The Pentagon announced Monday it will send at least 5,200 troops to the southern border to deal with the caravan of thousands of migrants fleeing violence in Honduras. The caravan is hundreds of miles south of the border, approximately a month away from reaching the U.S.
Trump has cited the caravan during rallies with supporters as he seeks to bolster support for Republicans ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections.
But the president rejected any notion that he is “fearmongering,” and called immigration a “very important subject.”
“Immigration is a very, very big and very dangerous — a really dangerous topic,” Trump said. “And we’re not going to allow people to come into our country that don’t have the well-being of our country in mind.”
The president also criticized Democrats for not providing the votes needed to pass immigration reform.
