President Donald Trump on Sunday said he was willing to shut down the government if the promises made by the Congress to fund his border wall were not fulfilled by September.
I would be willing to “shut down” government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall! Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our Country!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2018
This comes in the light of similar threats of shutdown that Trump has made several times since taking office in 2017. They were made in a bid to get immigration priorities in congressional spending bills, especially funding for a wall along the southern US border. Trump has asked for $25 billion to build the wall.
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In March, Trump said he would be open to “closing up the country for a while” if he was not to get his wall. “They don’t want the wall. But we’re going to get the wall, even if we have to think about closing up the country for a while,” Trump said.
In February, Trump said that he’d “love to see a shutdown” if the government did not focus on immigration.
If a shutdown happen, it would be the third such instance in 2018, after a shutdown in January when the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans wrestled with Democrats over protection for ‘Dreamers’, a group of young immigrants.
Another shutdown happened when Kentucky’s Republican Senator Rand Paul impeded a spending vote.
The US president has made tougher immigration laws a centerpiece of his administration, from a travel ban on people from predominantly Muslim nations to the current separation of illegal immigrant children from their parents at the US-Mexico border.
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