Democrats want immigrants to 'infest our country': Trump

US President Donald Trump has again attempted to defend his administration's controversial policy of separating Central American immigrant children from their parents at the southern border and said that Democrats want undocumented immigrants to “infest our country.”

“We must always arrest people coming into our Country illegally. Of the 12,000 children, 10,000 are being sent by their parents on a very dangerous trip, and only 2000 are with their parents, many of whom have tried to enter our Country illegally on numerous occasions,” he wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

"Democrats are the problem. They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13. They can’t win on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters!" he continued in another tweet.

On Friday, Trump falsely defended his administration’s controversial policy by blaming Democrats in Congress.

“I hate the children being taken away. The Democrats have to change their law. That's their law,” he said.

However, no US law mandates separating children from their parents who illegally enter the country. Reporters repeatedly noted to Trump that his statement about the policy was untrue.

“[Attorney General Jeff Sessions is] following laws, very simply, that were given to us and forced upon us by the Democrats,” Trump said.

Nearly 2,000 immigrant children were separated from parents over a period of about six weeks in April and May, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The number is a dramatic uptick from the nearly 1,800 family separations from October 2016 through February 2018.

Currently, there are over 10,000 children being detained in the United States.

The Trump administration's current policy of separating families was announced April 6 and went into effect in May. Previously, people who entered the country illegally and had no criminal record were detained or referred for deportation, and mothers and children usually remained together.

Democrats have condemned the new process, calling it inhumane and cruel. “This is not a zero-tolerance policy — this is a zero-humanity policy,” said Senator Jeff Merkley, who recently visited detention centers in Texas to see where immigrant children were being held.

A US border patrol official told Reuters children are sometimes separated from the adults they are traveling with if officials suspect the relationship is fraudulent.

Once children are separated, they are treated as unaccompanied minors under the care of the Department of Health and Human Services, which houses them in government facilities, puts them in temporary foster care, or releases them to adult sponsors in the United States.

The moves by the government to separate families have been widely decried by the United Nations, medical professionals and a wide swath of US religious leaders.

Members of Congress have introduced legislation to end the practice of separating families, but continue to call on Trump to unilaterally stop the practice.

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