President Donald Trump has prompted fury among some after he signed photographs of young victims killed by undocumented immigrants in attempt to push back against the child border separation uproar.
At a White House event on Friday, Trump brought in 11 people as they each held photographs of their loved ones who have died as a result of crimes committed by unauthorized immigrants.
The photos of the 11 young victims unmistakably had Trump’s signature scrawled across them.
It is not clear when Trump signed the photos or if it was at the request of the families who the President referred to as ‘angel families’.
President Donald Trump has prompted fury among some after he signed photographs of young victims killed by undocumented immigrants. He is pictured above holding a portrait of Ronald da Silva
But the President was quickly criticized on social media, with many accusing him of being narcissistic and using the slain victims as political pawns.
‘Holy s**t Trump appears to have autographed the big big photos of each dead kid,’ one person tweeted.
Others wrote: ‘He really will put his name on anything’, ‘There is no bottom with this guy’ and ‘This man is a sociopathic ghoul’.
‘This motherf***er literally autographed pictures of dead children. I didn’t think I could hate him anymore, and yet…’ another person tweeted.
Trump used the event to cast doubt on the heartbreaking tales of migrant children separated from their families at the border as he dismissed the ‘phoney stories of sadness and grief’.
Women who have lost relatives to crimes caused by illegal immigrants attended the event at the White House on Friday and held portraits of their loved ones
Trump shook hands with the 11 people holding portraits of their loved ones. Trump’s signature could be seen clearly on each of the photographs
The photos of the 11 young victims unmistakably had Trump’s signature scrawled across them
He said that the real victims of the nation’s immigration crisis are Americans who have been killed by those who cross the border unlawfully.
Bombarded with criticism condemning the family-separation situation as a national moment of shame, Trump came back firing as he highlighted the genuine grief of families on the other side of the equation.
‘We’re gathered today to hear from the American victims of illegal immigration. You know, you hear the other side. You never hear this side,’ said Trump as he took beside the family members.
He focused on the fact that young migrants separated from parents are likely to be reunited, unlike the victims of murders.
‘These are the American citizens permanently separated from their loved ones. The word ‘permanently’ being the word that you have to think about. Permanently – they’re not separated for a day or two days, these are permanently separated because they were killed by criminal illegal aliens,’ he said.
At the somber event, Trump introduced the families, who delivered heartbreaking tales of their loved ones’ lives and, at times, gruesome descriptions of their deaths.
Trump said that one of the victims looked like the actor Tom Selleck, ‘except better looking’.
‘Your loss will not have been in vain,’ Trump said. ‘We will secure our borders, and we will make sure that they’re properly taken care of.’
Following international outrage about child separation, Trump on Wednesday abruptly reversed course and signed an executive order to overturn his policy – although up to 2,000 children are still believed to be separated from their parents.
But that rare moment of public capitulation was brief from the president, who laced his remarks at a rally in Minnesota that night with hardline immigration rhetoric that continued Friday.
Trump said at the event that the real victims of the nation’s immigration crisis are Americans who have been killed by those who cross the border unlawfully
It is not clear when Trump signed the photos or if it was at the request of the families who the President referred to as ‘angel families’
In a tweet, the president raised questions about whether the migrants’ hardships really existed.
‘We must maintain a Strong Southern Border,’ he tweeted. ‘We cannot allow our Country to be overrun by illegal immigrants as the Democrats tell their phony stories of sadness and grief, hoping it will help them in the elections. Obama and others had the same pictures, and did nothing about it!’
Trump’s suggestion that the stories were erroneous was likely fueled by revelations on Friday about one of the defining images to this point in the crisis – a crying 2-year-old Honduran girl named Yanela Denise.
The girl in the photograph, who ended up on the cover of Time Magazine this week, was not separated from her mother but detained with her, the child’s father revealed to DailyMail.com.
Time Magazine said it stood by the image because it captures ‘the stakes of this moment.’