President Donald Trump is coming under fire from Democrats for a line that seemingly equated Dreamers to vicious gang members in his report on the State of the Union.
Referencing the murder of two teens at the hands of MS-13, Trump said: ‘Many of these gang members took advantage of glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as illegal, unaccompanied alien minors.’
The remark had Democratic lawmakers up in arms. Sen. Kamala Harris told MSNBC after the prime time address it was scapegoating and fear-mongering. And it was wrong.’
President Donald Trump is coming under fire from Democrats for a line that seemingly equated Dreamers to vicious gang members in his report on the State of the Union
Wednesday morning on CNN, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders shot back, ‘Bill Clinton got a standing ovation for using similar language in one of his State of the Union addresses.
‘Democrats have voted to end the visa lottery system,’ she said. ‘Democrats and Republicans should both be celebrating. As the president said, everybody didn’t get everything they wanted, but the country is getting what they need.’
Sanders said Trump was clear in his intent when he called on Congress to ‘finally close the deadly loopholes that have allowed MS-13, and other criminal gangs, to break into our country.’
‘There was no code. The President could not have been more clear. He has laid out exactly what he wants to see in an immigration reform plan,’ she stated.
Sanders told DailyMaill.com in an email after her CNN appearance that she was referring to a passage in Clinton’s 1995 State of the Union address in which he asserted that Americans all over the nation are ‘rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country.’
‘That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens,’ Clinton said.
The second-term Democrat told legislators he would present them with a budget that would do ‘more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace.’
‘We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it,’ he said to applause.
Sanders also said that Bill Clinton appointed an immigration commission led by Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Jordan that called for ending chain migration.
President Trump had not weighed into the controversy as of Wednesday morning. Resisting the urge to slap back at Democrats, Trump said nothing about his speech at all prior to a meeting at the White House with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis that Vice President Mike Pence also attended.
In his remarks Trump had made only one reference to ‘Dreamers’ and it was to say that American citizens ‘are dreamers too’ also angering Democrats.
‘A lot of empty rhetoric,’ Sen. Cory Booker, a 2020 hopeful, told Politico. ‘Those words were not helpful.’