US President Donald Trump labelled his country's asylum programme as a "scam," during an address to the Republican Jewish Coalition here on Saturday (local time).
"The asylum programme is a scam. Some of the roughest people you've ever seen. People that look like they should be fighting for the UFC," he said, attracting a round of laughter from the crowd.
He claimed that lawyers allegedly coached asylum seekers as to what to say to get asylum in the United States.
"They read a little page given by lawyers that are all over the place - you know lawyers, they tell them what to say. You look at this guy, you say, wow, 'that's a tough cookie'," he said.
Apparently emulating an asylum seeker, Trump read out the hypothetical instruction: "I am very fearful for my life, I am very worried that I will be accosted if I'm sent back home."
Trump has been a vocal critic of immigrants entering the United States through its Southern border with Mexico. He has repeatedly called for the construction of a wall on the US-Mexico border, with a recent impasse between the President and the US Congress over the fence driving the United States into its longest-ever partial government shutdown.
He also cut all US federal payments to the South American countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, alleging that they failed to stop the flow of migrants towards the United States.
"Now if their government wanted to, I have a feeling they'd be able to stop caravans from forming in those three countries, I have a feeling. They're pretty tough, they're pretty tough down there. And, but they didn't, so I stopped the payments," he said.
The opposition has slammed Trump's rhetoric on immigrants on multiple occasions, with senior Democratic leaders deriding his proposed wall as a waste of taxpayer money.
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