President Donald Trump continues to prove relentlessly committed to putting up a wall between the United States and Mexico no matter the practical obstacles — including the reality of the situation — that stand in his way. This week, he resorted to pointing to Mexican crime as supposed evidence of the necessity of his wall, indicating that there’s poised to be some kind of spillover at the border despite little evidence to that effect.
He ranted:
‘Very sadly, Murder cases in Mexico in 2018 rose 33% from 2017, to 33,341. This is a big contributor to the Humanitarian Crisis taking place on our Southern Border and then spreading throughout our Country. Worse even than Afghanistan. Much caused by DRUGS. Wall is being built!’
To be clear — no, the border wall still isn’t being built. He alternates between claiming that conventional barrier reinforcements constitute his great glorious wall and refusing to approve any government funding without billions that he wants to fund the wall.
Although it is true that the murder rate in Mexico has gone up as struggles between authorities and the drug cartels have continued, to again be clear, there’s no evidence to suggest this violence has or will spill over into the United States. Although as with native born, white Americans, a tiny minority of undocumented immigrants have committed horrible crimes, there’s no evidence of a dramatic surge in that crime that you’d find concurrent to the “invasions” Trump claims are happening.
Although undocumented border crossings are down over time, more and more women and children seek asylum at the southern border, which Trump somewhat acknowledges by calling his fantasy a “humanitarian crisis.” His solution to this crisis is… to put up a wall? He’s just going to try and physically push the people away and wash his hands of it?
Seriously?
This shouldn’t be too surprising coming from the guy whose administration previously resorted to family separation in response to asylum claims.
Check out Twitter’s response to Trump ranting about Mexico’s murder rate below…
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
