US: US President Donald Trump told reporters assembled in the Oval Office on Tuesday that he has “very good information” that there are “Middle Easterners” in the caravan, but admitted he has “no proof.”
“There's no proof of anything. There's no proof of anything. But there could very well be,” Trump said.
Trump was asked about why he is implying that “Middle Easterners” are terrorists, and he responded by saying Customs and Border Patrol has intercepted both “good” and “bad” people at the border from the Middle East.
“Over the course of the year, over the course of a number of years, they have intercepted many people from the Middle East. They have intercepted Islamic State (ISIS). They have intercepted all sorts of people. They have intercepted good ones and bad ones. They have intercepted wonderful people from the Middle East. And they have intercepted bad ones,” Trump said.
While meeting with reporters, Trump asked Vice President Mike Pence to comment on his conversation with the president of Honduras. Pence said the caravan was financed by Venezuela.
“At the president's discretion, I spoke to President Hernandez of Honduras,” Pence said. “He told me that the caravan that is now making its way through Mexico, headed for the southern border, was organized by leftist organizations and financed by Venezuela.”
Pence doubled down earlier Tuesday on the president's assertion that “Middle Easterners” have infiltrated a caravan of Central American migrants traveling through Mexico to the U.S. border.
“It's inconceivable that there are not people of Middle Eastern descent in a crowd of more than 7,000 people advancing toward our border,” Pence said in a conversation with the Washington Post on Tuesday morning.
Pence backed up President Donald Trump's statements that people from the Middle East were mixed in with the thousands of migrants traveling to the nation's southern border to escape violence and poverty in their countries.
Trump made the comments in a tweet Monday and repeated them during a campaign rally in Houston later that night, also claiming that MS-13 gang members were part of the caravan. In recent days, Trump has attempted to make the migrant caravan a midterm campaign issue by blaming Democrats for not cooperating with him on immigration reform.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer dismissed Trump's claim as a diversion from other issues, particularly health care, ahead of the midterm elections. Efforts to reach a compromise in Congress on immigration reform stalled in June after Trump refused to back a bill that didn't include radical reductions to the current legal immigration system.
- ABC NEWS
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