by Amna El Tawil
According to reports, President Donald Trump will order the construction of Mexico border wall today. White House officials told the New York Times that Mr. Trump will order the construction of a Mexican border wall — the first in a series of actions this week to crack down on immigrants and bolster national security, including slashing the number of refugees who can resettle in the United States and blocking Syrians and others from “terror-prone” nations from entering, at least temporarily.
Building a wall along the border with Mexico was one of Donald Trump’s biggest campaign promises and he plans to keep it. He firmly believes that doing so would put a stop to the influx of illegal immigrants coming into the United States today.
Last night he tweeted that he plans to engage in national security issues in a bid to keep as many promises as he gave throughout his campaign.
Big day planned on NATIONAL SECURITY tomorrow. Among many other things, we will build the wall!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017
The move begins a multi-day roll out of immigration actions that are also expected to include moves related to refugees and visas. Trump will make the announcement during a visit to the Department of Homeland Security at 1:25 p.m. ET.
The president plans to issue two executive orders today during his visit to the Department of Homeland Security. The first will direct the agency to begin construction of the border wall, as well as take steps to repair existing areas of fencing along the frontier between the US and Mexico. The order will also include a mandate to increase staff at Customs and Border Protection by 5,000 and alleviate the flood of migrants fleeing violence in Central America. Trump’s executive order will require DHS to publicly detail what aid is currently directed to Mexico, an indication of an eventual move toward redirecting some of that money to fund the wall’s construction — and giving cover for a longstanding campaign promise to have Mexico pay for the structure.
On the other hand, a second order will work to eliminate so-called “sanctuary cities,” where municipal governments refuse to hand over undocumented immigrants to federal authorities. That order will triple resources for Immigration and Custom Enforcement and direct the federal government to identify criminal aliens in the US.
As already mentioned, this week Trump plans to take action on visas and refugees. It’s assumed he’ll most likely do it tomorrow, Thursday. This way a program for admitting Syrian refugees, who are fleeing civil war and a humanitarian crisis, would be ended indefinitely.