President Donald Trump has claimed that people from the Middle East and members of the MS-13 criminal gang were part of the caravan of mostly Hoduran migrants moving towards the United States.
He said Monday that the "Middle Easterns" and the gang's members were trying to sneak into the US by being among people in the caravan.
Take the camera, go into the middle and search. You're going to find MS-13, you're going to find Middle Easterns -- you're going to find everything.
"And guess what? We're not allowing them in our country. We want safety, Trump told reporters at the White House.
When asked what he meant by middle easterns, Trump asked the reporter to go to the caravan to see that.
I had reports and they have a lot of everybody in the group. It's a horrible thing and it's a lot bigger than 5,000 people and we got to stop them at the border and unfortunately, you look at the countries, they have not done their job, he said.
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MS-13 or the Mara Salvatrucha, is among the criminal outfits behind a wave of violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
The US, Trump said gives a lot of money as aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. The three countries from where thousands of people are now marching towards America.
Every year we give them foreign aid. They did nothing for us. Nothing. They did nothing for us. So, we give them tremendous amounts of money you know what it is, you cover it all the time hundreds of millions of dollars. They, like a lot of others, do nothing for our country," he said.
Trump had earlier in the day threatened to cut off aid to these three Latin American countries which was opposed by lawmakers.
Migrant families are fleeing extreme violence and political oppression, and are trying to seek asylum in the United States.
"The president's threat to cut off foreign aid in response to this growing humanitarian crisis is not only cruel and inhumane, it ignores that Congress, not the president, is entrusted by the Constitution with the power of the purse, said Congresswoman Nita Lowey, a ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee.
Cutting funding would make the problem worse, not better, she said.
Congress must reject the administration's dangerous agenda and policies and immediately work to pass comprehensive reform of our nation's broken immigration laws to keep families together and protect our economy, Lowey said.
Congressman Vicente Gonzalez alleged that the Trump administration was trying to paint some members of Congress as the culprits of this migrant caravan' and past mass migration.
However, I can personally attest to the falsity of this argument. I have travelled to these countries on bipartisan delegations, met with foreign leaders, and invited the executive branch to join the conversation on how to improve years of failed foreign policy in Central America, he said.
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