Trump criticizes California over lawsuit against border wall

2/19/2019 – The Washington Post

(Evan Vucci, File/Associated Press)

By the Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is criticizing California’s lead role in a multistate lawsuit challenging his emergency declaration to pay for a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

On Twitter Tuesday, Trump noted last week’s decision by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to cancel a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Trump claims the “failed Fast Train project” was beset by “world record setting” cost overruns and had become “hundreds of times more expensive than the desperately needed Wall!”

Trump complained about the lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco. He incorrectly identifies the plaintiffs as “16 cities.” California and 15 other states are parties to the suit filed Monday that alleges that Trump’s declaration is unconstitutional.

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O’Rourke, Trump to Headline Dueling Texas Border Town Rallies

2/11/2019 – The New York Times

By Reuters

EL PASO, Texas — Beto O’Rourke, the former Democratic Texas congressman who is considering a 2020 White House bid, will join a march Monday night to protest Republican President Donald Trump’s rally at the same time in the border town of El Paso.

O’Rourke, who became a Democratic star in 2018 during his unexpectedly close but unsuccessful bid for a U.S. Texas Senate seat, will make a speech lambasting Trump’s plans for a border wall as Trump promotes his long-promised barrier at an event nearby.

The dueling rallies come after Trump claimed in his State of the Union speech last week that a border fence separating El Paso from Mexico reduced the city’s high crime rate.

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U.S. lawmakers to hold border security talks in bid to avert shutdown

2/11/2019 0 Reuters

REUTERS/Jorge Duenes/File Photo

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The top four Democratic and Republican negotiators in the U.S. Congress on border security funding plan to meet on Monday in a bid to reach an elusive deal by a Friday deadline to avert another partial government shutdown.

The talks were scheduled to resume in Washington hours before Republican President Donald Trump plans a rally in the Texas border city of El Paso, where he is expected to promote his long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

An anti-wall protest will greet the Republican president, led by hometown Democrat Beto O’Rourke, the former congressman who is considering running for his party’s 2020 presidential nomination after gaining national prominence last year by nearly upsetting Republican Ted Cruz in a U.S. Senate race in Texas.

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Trump and O’Rourke Face Off in Battle at the Border Over Wall

2/11/2019 – The New York Times

Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s confrontations with potential Democratic challengers in 2020 have mostly been limited to sniping on Twitter. But Monday night in El Paso, he will engage in his most direct conflict with a possible rival — former Representative Beto O’Rourke, a native of the city that shares a border with Mexico.

Mr. Trump’s rally in El Paso is his most significant since the midterm elections that delivered the House of Representatives to Democrats. It will provide the president with a backdrop that he will use to again argue for a border wall to stop what he said is a surge of crime and drugs being brought into the country by migrants seeking illegal entry.

Mr. O’Rourke has been among those who have strongly rebutted the president’s case that El Paso serves as an example of where building a wall has indeed provided a solution to crime.

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‘Disgusting’ razor wire must go, say U.S. border city residents

2/8/2019 – Reuters

REUTERS/Paul Ingram

By Andrew Hey

(Reuters) – When Sherrie Nixon saw the six strands of razor wire strung along the U.S.-Mexico border fence in her Arizona city, she said she wanted to cry.

“They’re turning our town into a military base. It’s like the front lines of some kind of war zone,” Nixon, 68, told the Nogales City Council on Wednesday night. “Please take a stand and at least have them get rid of the razor wire. It’s a public nuisance, it’s lethal.”

Minutes later, the council unanimously passed a resolution condemning the use of the concertina wire as an indiscriminate use of lethal force normally reserved for battlefields and high-security prisons.

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Frustration grows as migrant caravan stuck in Mexico shelter

2/8/2019 – The Washington Post

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico — Patience was wearing thin Thursday for some of the 1,600 Central American migrants spending their fourth day at an improvised shelter in the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras, across from Eagle Pass, Texas.

Facing a long wait and a somewhat harsh welcome in Piedras Negras, in the northern state of Coahuila, some migrants asked to return to their home countries; the largest single group of those returning were from Honduras.

A large police force stood guard outside the unused factory complex where the shelter is located, about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the border. A chain-link fence rings the perimeter of the shelter.

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Trump’s Claim That Mexico Sent Migrants to the Border Is Partly True

2/6/2019 – The New York Times

President Trump’s State of the Union speech hit hard on a topic that has dominated his term in office: defending the border with Mexico against what he described as migrants in “large organized caravans.”

He also suggested that the Mexican authorities were encouraging the migrants to cross the border illegally.

“We have just heard that Mexican cities, in order to remove the illegal immigrants from their communities, are getting trucks and buses to bring them up to our country in areas where there is little border protection,” Mr. Trump said in his speech Tuesday night.

Some aspects of Mr. Trump’s assertions are true but others are unsubstantiated or distorted. There is no evidence, for example, that the Mexican authorities are sending migrants to weak points along the border.

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