WASHINGTON, D.C.—Today, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders calling for the building of a $14 billion wall at the United States and Mexico border. The executive orders also increase the policing, detention, and criminalization of undocumented immigrants, and strip federal funding from local governments that are welcoming to undocumented immigrants.
Trump is scheduled to meet with Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray this week, and meet with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Tuesday, reported The Huffington Post. Nieto has rejected Trump’s claims that Mexico will pay for a border wall.
“It is evident that we have differences with the new United States government on some issues, such as a wall that Mexico absolutely will not pay for,” Peña Nieto said earlier this month. “At no time will we accept anything that goes against our dignity as a country and our dignity as Mexicans … basic principles such as sovereignty, the national interest and the protection of our citizens are non-negotiable.”
National LGBTQ Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey criticized Trump’s action calling it, “… an egregious attack on immigrants and their families, including LGBTQ immigrants.”
“Instead of taking steps to fix our broken immigration system, President Donald Trump is adding fuel to a fire that continues to tear families apart, deny undocumented immigrants of their human dignity, and vilify Muslims.,” continued Carey. “The president and vice president are circumventing Congress by fulfilling campaign promises built on fear mongering, racism, bigotry, xenophobia, and violence. Their agenda of hate is contrary to the core American values of freedom, justice, and equality; and downright dangerous to the lives of millions of black and brown people, LGBTQ people, and allies in this country,”
California State Assemblywoman and California Latino Legislative Caucus Vice Chairwoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (D-San Diego) said in statement that Trump’s actions will harm California’s immigrant community.
“My district is one the most diverse set of neighborhoods in the entire country. I represent immigrant communities that include the border with Mexico as well as one of our nation’s largest refugee communities in City Heights,” said Gonzalez-Fletcher. “Donald Trump’s actions today run contrary to our most basic American values of compassion and inclusion. He will jeopardize the lives of thousands of innocent men, women and children who are in harm’s way. Forcing police to freelance as border agents doesn’t make our communities safer, nor neither does wasting billions of American tax dollars to further divide our binational community with a border wall. This is embarrassingly un-American.”
How the wall will be paid for is still unclear.
