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DHS Chief Says U.S. Is Fortifying Border Against Migrant ‘Surge’

DHS Chief Says U.S. Is Fortifying Border Against Migrant ‘Surge’

(Bloomberg) -- The Trump administration will expedite the return of migrants to Mexico and speed up plans to deploy additional personnel to the southern border amid a surge of people trying to enter the U.S., Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Monday.

The government will expand a program designed to return migrants with pending immigration proceedings to Mexico while they wait for their court cases to proceed, Nielsen said in a statement. The aim is to deny entry to the U.S. for hundreds of additional migrants per day, she said. She ordered Customs and Border Patrol to accelerate plans to deploy up to 750 officers to the border, and explore increasing the number.

DHS Chief Says U.S. Is Fortifying Border Against Migrant ‘Surge’

“The crisis at our border is worsening, and DHS will do everything in its power to end it,” Nielsen said. “We will not stand idly by while Congress fails to act yet again, so all options are on the table."

Apprehensions of undocumented immigrants spiked in February to more than 76,000, an increase of more than 39,000 compared to a year earlier, according to Customs and Border Protection. More than half were families or unaccompanied children, the agency reported.

Nielsen’s announcement came as President Donald Trump continues to threaten to close official ports of entry at the border, a move that would disrupt commerce with America’s third-largest trading partner. On Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said it would take “something dramatic” to avoid the closure.

“The Democrats will not give us any additional money to do this, they won’t give us any additional people, and importantly, they will not change the law that is acting as this giant magnet for people from South and Central America to come into this country,” Mulvaney said on ABC News’s “This Week”. “Faced with those limitations, the president will do everything he can. If closing the ports of entry mean that, that’s exactly what he intends to do.”

Trade with Mexico totaled $616 billion in 2017, according to the office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters on Monday that he wouldn’t respond to Trump’s threats to close the border.

“We are helping, we are not going to engage in confrontation with the United States,” he said. “It has already been recommended to me” by the Mexican people.

Trump also said on Friday that he would end foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, the so-called “Northern Triangle” that is the source of much of the surge in undocumented U.S. immigration. But Democrats have warned that eliminating assistance to the countries would only increase poverty and crime, driving additional migrants to travel to the U.S.

“From combating drug trafficking and transnational criminal groups to helping establish safe communities with economic opportunities, U.S. foreign assistance addresses the factors driving migration from Central America,” Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said on Sunday.

--With assistance from Kim Chipman and Cyntia Barrera Diaz.

To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua Gallu

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