President Trump threatened Thursday to summon the military to close the U.S.-Mexico border and upend a trade deal, expressing mounting frustration with a large caravan of migrants from Honduras that has been making its way toward the U.S., the Washington Post reports. Trump repeated vows to halt U.S. aid to Central American countries that do not disband the caravan and issued a fresh threat to the Mexican government, which said that it would treat those in the caravan no differently than it does other migrants. “I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught – and if unable to do so I will call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!” Trump said in one tweet.
His comments come as Trump has been urging fellow Republicans to make immigration a central issue in the closing weeks of their midterm election campaigns and blaming Democrats for his failure to pass immigration legislation in the GOP-controlled Congress. Trump warned that the latest group of immigrants includes “MANY CRIMINALS.” The number of migrant parents entering the U.S. has surged to record levels in the three months since President Trump ended family separations at the border, dealing the administration a deepening crisis three weeks before the midterm elections. Border Patrol agents arrested 16,658 family members in September, the highest one-month total on record and an 80 percent increase from July. Large groups of 100 or more Central American parents and children have been crossing the Rio Grande and the deserts of Arizona to turn themselves in, and after citing a fear of return, the families are typically assigned a court date and released from custody. “We’re getting hammered daily,” said one Border Patrol agent in South Texas.