Home Opinion GOP Ranking Members Join Democrats in Opposing Trump on Central America

GOP Ranking Members Join Democrats in Opposing Trump on Central America

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Taking drastic action over illegal immigration, President Donald Trump moved Saturday to cut direct aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, whose citizens are fleeing north and overwhelming U.S. resources at the southern border.

The State Department notified Congress that it would look to suspend 2017 and 2018 payments to the trio of nations, which have been home to some of the migrant caravans that have marched through Mexico to the U.S. border.

Now several key Republicans have declared their opposition to President Donald Trump’s order to freeze direct aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, including the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Relations Committee, Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX).

These GOP ranking members agree with the Dems that cutting the budget for these countries would make the migrant crisis even worse!

While speaking at the Wilson Center in Washington on Monday Mike McCaul doubted President Trump’s decision to cut the direct aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras!

“If we cut all this funding, and a lot of it, quite honestly, is seriously law enforcement that we’re doing down there… I think it’s going to make things tragically worse, not better,”

His opinion seems too similar to Democrat leaders such as House Foreign Affairs chairman Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) and ranking Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrat Bob Menendez (D-NJ).

Breitbart reported:

McCaul made a trip to the Northern Triangle last weekend with Engel. Upon his return, McCaul said he and Engel agreed even more funding was needed for the programs President Trump wishes to freeze:

We got the presentation on what USAID is doing down there, rerouting at-risk youth into training, into computer training, away from MS-13, and we got briefed on the international law enforcement that’s taking place in El Salvador where MS-13 is prevalent, that has been hugely successful.

Ironically, Eliot and I were talking about strengthening the Central American Regional Security Initiative because I think it’s a great return on our investment. We can be very reactive at our border, to stop them from coming in.

McCaul’s position was shared by Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, who conceded “funding alone will not solve the problem” but worried a unilateral halt to Northern Triangle aid would cripple some programs that have been effective at reducing migration.

“Where programs aren’t working, funds should be redirected. Where programs are working, they should continue to receive our support,” Granger urged.

The heart of the issue is whether these programs really are reducing migration in any meaningful sense, since the current border crisis is utterly overwhelming, to the point where some in the Trump administration think it could hardly get any worse.

McCaul has expressed security concerns about migrant “caravans” in the past, acknowledging that criminal gangs are assisting illegal immigrants and using the migrant tide to send their own operatives across the border, but he felt U.S. border security is currently so weak that interdiction at the source is the only way to alleviate the crisis.

He noted last May that the U.S. asylum system is easily gamed, especially when the number of applications for asylum is overwhelming, and the Central American gangs have realized children are the key to bypassing U.S. border security because American agencies have become very nervous about detaining or deporting people who reach the border with minors in tow.

How many billions of dollars have these corrupt governments taken from the US taxpayers for decades?

And what did we got from it only the biggest crisis on our souther border.