“Why are we talking about closing the border?” Mulvaney said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” “Not to try and undo what’s happening, but simply to say, ‘look we need the people from the ports of entry to go out and patrol in the desert where we don’t have a wall.’”
Trump’s attempt to seal off the border by building a wall, and mulling the closure of ports to tamp down on immigration and drug smuggling, is at odds with a nagging reality: Smuggling activity largely comes through ports of entry, according to government data. And the president’s move to cut off aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador ignores a long-standing strategy touted by aid groups and military experts — including the president’s former chief of staff — that supporting those countries actually makes the border safer.
Still, Trump spent the past week emboldened by the results of his attorney general’s summary of a report by special counsel Robert Mueller that said that he and his campaign had not cooperated with the Russian government. The president immediately turned back to immigration.
“I’m not playing games,” he told reporters during a weekend in Florida, which followed a week spent berating the Democratic Party for what he called lax immigration laws, assailing countries he has accused of doing little to stop the flow of migrants traveling north, and disparaging individual travelers seeking asylum.
In the interview, Mulvaney criticized Jeh Johnson, who led the Department of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama, for saying in a recent interview that the situation at the border was “truly in a crisis.” In February, 76,000 migrants were apprehended crossing the border — an 11-year high — and the crossings are expected to increase again in March.
“We hate to say we told you so,” Mulvaney said. “We need border security, and we’re going to do the best we can with what we have.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.