President Trump disputed a New York Times report on Monday that suggested he was wary of signing an executive order last week to end family separations at the border.
“There was a false story, fake news in the New York Times,” Trump said during a bilateral meeting with his Jordanian counterpart, referencing a report in which anonymous White House staffers said he complained about the unilateral action he took last Wednesday.
Trump unveiled the executive order last week amid an onslaught of criticism over his administration’s practice of housing children in government-run detention facilities while their parents are prosecuted for illegal entry. According to the Times, the president repeatedly asked aides why the order couldn’t be expanded to include permanent reforms to current U.S. immigration laws.
“The executive order was great. It was something I felt we had to do,” Trump said Monday. “I wanted to sign that. Like I was saying yesterday, just before I read this phony story in the New York Times, I really wanted to sign that.”
Trump’s comments come as the White House grapples with the legal challenges of detaining illegal immigrant children with their parents for more than 20 days, a practice that would place the administration in direct violation of the Flores settlement which prohibits the prolonged detention of children who enter the U.S. illegally.
He told reporters on Monday that Republicans are close to fixing existing immigration loopholes that they believe incentivize illegal immigration and enable undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. for extended periods of time without consequence.
“We want strong borders and we want no crime. The Democrats want open borders and they don’t care about crime,” Trump charged. “That’s what we want and that’s what we’re going to get and we’re going to get it sooner than people think.”
