President Donald Trump signed a bill on July 1 that will bring $4.6 billion in emergency funds for humanitarian aid and security for immigrants at the southern border of the U.S.
It was a struggle for the president to get the important and much-needed funding for assistance at the border due to the Democrats continuously denying the money for aid. “For many weeks, Democrats were giving us a hard time,” Trump said to reporters in the Oval Office., but in the end, “it became a bipartisan bill. We were very happy about it.”
The new bill provides funding for medical care, shelters, and more housing for children via the Department of Health and Human Services as well as support for America’s immigration law enforcement officials.
“This is a humane solution to a tremendous problem that’s caused because we have bad immigration laws, and we can solve that problem very, very quickly if we could get together with the Democrats,” said Trump. “It shouldn’t be this way. We’re the only ones in the world that have a system like this. It’s absolutely insane, our system of immigration.”
The unprecedented surge of illegal immigrants at the U.S. border has truly tested America’s system of immigration and stretched facilities to the extreme. In fact, over 1 million immigrants will be caught attempting to enter the United States illegally this year. To give an example of how and why this affects this country so much, these illegal immigrants are equal to more than the population of seven U.S. states.
One of the main issues with the immigration laws in the U.S. is the loopholes in the Flores settlement agreement. Its terms and additional rulings by activist judges are the reason many illegal families have been released and cleared to live free in America. Immigration officials were forced to release families with children after a short amount of time in detention, essentially sending the message that anyone who arrived at the U.S. border with a minor would be allowed to enter and live in the country. This has led to a drastic increase of exploited children who have been used as a means of detouring around the immigration laws.
The president and other U.S. officials have issued warnings for well over a year about the use of abandoned and abducted children to illegally gain entrance to the U.S. by acting as if they are a family – “a claim that critics said was overblown,” said Wendy Fry of The San Diego Union-Tribune. “But now, authorities in Tijuana are warning migrant mothers to keep their children close by and supervised.”
Meanwhile, Democrats continue to block any legislation and deny any long-term solutions that address these illegal immigration issues. However, signs do indicate the Republicans are making progress, as a CNN poll indicated that almost three-quarters of Americans agree that the situation at the southern border is a crisis. In January, only 23% of Democrats considered it a crisis, whereas now, 70% of Democrats see it that way.
