On Tuesday, President Trump continued to push his desire for a border wall on the U.S.- Mexico border, even suggesting a “human wall” to prevent immigrants from illegally entering the U.S. President Trump will give his State of the Union address tonight where he could talk about border security at length.
The “human wall” the President refers to is a metaphor for a combination of additional military personnel or ICE agents to be positioned at the southern border.
“Tremendous numbers of people are coming up through Mexico in the hopes of flooding our Southern Border. We have sent additional military. We will build a Human Wall if necessary,” President Trump wrote on Twitter this morning.
The Department of Defense announced on Sunday that 3,750 troops would be deployed to the southern border to assist immigration officers for 90 days, mostly assisting with placing razor wire on barriers and fences, and to help with mobile video surveillance.
An agreement was struck on Jan. 25 to end a 35-day partial shuttering of the government until Feb. 15. So far, there has not been an agreement for a funding budget to keep the government fully open for the remaining fiscal year. The President has floated the option of declaring a national emergency to secure the $5.7 billion he wants for border wall funding. Such a measure would likely be challenged by Democrats in the House of Representatives, but it’s unclear if the GOP-led Senate would vote to block the President from doing so.
“We don’t know what route the President’s going to take, so I’m not going to speculate on it at this point,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said. “I’m going to withhold judgment about that until we see what he does.”
