Democrats accuse Trump of 'misinformation and malice' as president declares 'humanitarian and security crisis' on border

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Senior Democrats have dismissed Donald Trump’s first national address from the White House in which the president declared a "growing humanitarian and security crisis" on the US-Mexico border, saying it was intended to stoke “fear and malice”.

In a ten-minute address from the Oval Office that began as the shutdown passed 17 days and 21 hours, Mr Trump repeated his demand for funding for a border wall, saying it would stop the flow of drugs and violent illegal immigrants. Such dubious claims have been a mainstay of his hardline stance on immigration.

However, the president did not, as some had anticipated, declare a national emergency to try and obtain funding without congressional approval.

“This is humanitarian crisis, a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul,” said the president, in a sober address in which he appeared to be trying to speak not just to his base of supporters.

He urged Democrats to return to the White House on Wednesday to continue negotiating a funding package to reopen those parts of the government that have been closed. He said it was “immoral for politicians to do nothing”.

But senior Democrats, who have refused to provide the president with the $5.6bn he wants to build a wall, or steel barrier as the president called it during the address, rejected his claim that they were responsible for the shutdown that has affected up to 800,000 government employees. It leaves the country no closer to ending a partial government shutdown that is quickly heading towards being the longest America has ever faced.

Speaking shortly after the president, Chuck Schumer, the Democrat leader in the Senate, said Mr Trump had used his prime-time address to “manufacture a crisis, stoke fear, and divert attention from the turmoil in his administration”.

“We can secure our border without an expensive, ineffective wall. And we can welcome legal immigrants and refugees without compromising safety and security,” he said. “The symbol of America should be the Statue of Liberty, not a thirty-foot wall.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose party now controls the House of Representatives and has been working to pass budget measures to reopen those shuttered parts of the government, said the president’s speech was “full of misinformation and even malice”. “The fact is: the women and children at the border are not a security threat, they are a humanitarian challenge.”

US presidents typically use the setting of the Oval Office to speak only of the gravest matters.

In October 1962, John F Kennedy spoke from there to inform the public of the Cuban missile crisis. In 1974, Richard Nixon used the setting to announce his intention to resign. In 2001, George W Bush spoke to the country, and the world, following the Al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11.

Mr Trump, in his first Oval Office address, sought to portray the events he was talking about in similarly stark terms.

“I am speaking to you because there is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border,” he said.

“Every day customs and border patrol agents encounter thousands of illegal immigrants trying to enter our country. We are out of space to hold them and we have no way to promptly return them back home to their country.”

He added: “America proudly welcomes millions of lawful immigrants who enrich our society and contribute to our nation. But, all Americans are hurt by uncontrolled illegal migration.”

Mr Schumer said the president could easily solve the shutdown problem, by delinking the issue of border security from government funding. “This president just used the backdrop of the Oval Office to manufacture a crisis, stoke fear, and divert attention from the turmoil in his administration,” he said.

Commentators immediately leapt on the president’s speech to point out several inaccuracies: the vast majority of drugs entering the US do through border crossings so a wall would not stop them; the greatest source of illegal immigration is people overstaying visas not crossing the desert; the crime rate in immigrant communities in the US is typically lower than in others.

This week, his administration was forced to backtrack after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Fox News that “nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists” had crossed into the US from Mexico last year. When NBC News pointed that border officials caught a total of six people on a security watchlist over a six-month period, Kellyanne Conway told reporters Ms Sanders had made “an unfortunate misstatement”.

Following his meeting with Democrats at the White House on Wednesday, he is due to travel to the US-Mexico border on Thursday. It may be, that he declares a national emergency then, if Democrats continue not to provide what he wants. The party has offered $1.3bn for general border security, but nothing for the wall.

While experts say say there is no immigration crisis at the border – in 2017 the number of illegal immigrants hit a low of 310,000 from a high of 1.6m in 2000 – what is true, is that the number of asylum seekers arriving at the border has soared.

These people, mainly from the Central American nations of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, all very poor and with horrifying levels of violence have been gathering at the US-Mexico border to seek asylum. Many have made their way on foot as part of the caravans that walked there through Mexico.

Many of those have been families, and while Mr Trump sought to talk about the plight of women and children in his address when speaking of the "humanitarian crisis" in reality they are not a big part of the narrative the president wants to create. Many border posts following Mr Trump's immigration policies have been ill-equipped to house and deal with families.

Experts say the president, who last year sent troops to the border ahead of the midterm elections, has conflated the asylum seekers with illegal immigrants for political reasons. During his 2016 run for the White House, Mr Trump claimed to supporters he would build a wall and that Mexico would pay for it.