Four months ahead of U.S. congressional elections, President Donald Trump unleashed new attacks Tuesday on opposition Democrats, accusing them of "demeaning" immigration law enforcement agents and being unappreciative of their work to keep criminals out of the country.
In one of a string of Twitter comments, the U.S. leader said, "How can the Democrats, who are weak on the Border and weak on Crime, do well in November. The people of our Country want and demand Safety and Security, while the Democrats are more interested in ripping apart and demeaning (and not properly funding) our great Law Enforcement!"
Trump's fellow Republicans now control both chambers of Congress, but U.S. political analysts say Democrats stand a decent chance of winning the majority in the House of Representatives, with an outside chance of assuming command in the Senate as well.
In his comments, Trump ignored the immediate immigration crisis at the southern border with Mexico - a federal judge's order to reunite more than 2,000 children with their parents, children immigration agents had separated from their parents when they crossed illegally into the United States. The edict calls for reuniting the youngest children, those under five, with their parents by next Tuesday, and older children by July 26.
News reports say the Trump administration has made little progress so far in carrying out the order, with most of the parents detained in southwestern states along the border and the children dispersed to shelters in far-flung states. After a worldwide outcry over the breakup of the families, Trump ordered parents and their children who cross the border illegally be kept together while they await legal proceedings.
Trump blamed Democrats for not being supportive of the country's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which helps patrol the border.
"When we have an 'infestation' of MS-13 GANGS in certain parts of our country, who do we send to get them out? ICE! They are tougher and smarter than these rough criminal elelments (sic) that bad immigration laws allow into our country. Dems do not appreciate the great job they do! Nov."
Several top Democratic critics of Trump, some of them eyeing a possible 2020 campaign against him in the next presidential campaign, have called for the abolition of ICE and rethinking how the U.S. controls the influx of immigrants, many of them escaping crime and poverty in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Trump said in an interview he hopes Democrats keep calling for the end of the ICE agency, branding it a winning political issue for Republicans in the November congressional elections and the presidential contest.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who could run against Trump in two years, said over the weekend, "The president's deeply immoral actions have made it obvious we need to rebuild our immigration system from top to bottom starting by replacing ICE with something that reflects our morality and that works. President Trump seems to think that the only way to have immigration rule is to rip parents from their family, is to treat rape victims and refugees like terrorists and to put children in cages."
"This is ugly and this is wrong and this is not the way to run our country," she said.
Another Trump critic, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, also called for abolition of ICE, saying, "I don’t think ICE today is working as intended. I believe that it has become a deportation force."
