Michael D. Shear

The president was greeted at the airport by the city’s mayor and other officials. His motorcade passed two recreational vehicles adorned with pro-Trump signs and flags as well as one man standing outside of a store advertising survival supplies with a sign that appeared to object to so-called red-flag laws that prevent people with mental illness from getting guns: “Red Flag is Dystopic Future.”

He planned to visit El Paso, Texas, later in the day.

Protesters gather in Dayton as Trump arrives.

Protesters gathered in Dayton to greet Trump, waving signs that said “Dump Trump” and “Do Something!” The protesters were met by demonstrators who waved competing signs supportive of Trump.

The main protest of about a hundred people materialized along a stretch of South Main Street, in a grassy field a few blocks from the hospital where Trump was visiting some of the shooting victims.

Michael Prince, 55 — burly, tattooed and bushy-bearded — stood next to Jim Madewell, 71 — burly, tattooed and bushy-bearded — and watched the scene.

“I want to give him the finger,” said Madewell, a retired printing press foreman who said he lives a 100 yards from the house where the Dayton shooter lived.

Madewell said he believed Trump’s language “throws gasoline on the fire,” and that leads to violence. “He feeds on negativity and hate and fear,” Madewell said.

In Dayton’s Oregon District, a politically mixed crowd had gathered by late morning. At one point, a chant of “Do something!” broke out, the same message that drowned out the state’s Republican governor during a Sunday night vigil.

Ken Williams, a Dayton area resident, said he had been planning to visit the Oregon District at the time of the shooting before a last-minute change of plans. Though he does not support Trump, Williams said he was hoping the president might stop to speak with him and others who had gathered.

“Are you going to listen to what we have to say?” Williams asked. “Are you going to respond to what we have to say? Or are you going to blow us off?”

As noon approached, the crowd in the Oregon District began to thin. At one point, a few supporters of the president started chanting “Trump, Trump, Trump.” Across the street, another woman yelled, “Trump for impeachment.”

But mostly, people just stood on the sidewalk, waiting for a motorcade that did not seem likely to come. Maj. Wendy Stiver of the city Police Department eventually told demonstrators that the president was not going to stop by.

Trump attacks his critics on Twitter before visiting cities in mourning.

Trump began a day set aside for healing by delivering a series of political grievances against liberals and the media, once again using Twitter to exhibit the divisive language that has prompted some in El Paso and Dayton to protest his visits after horrific shootings in those cities.

The president’s press secretary said Trump planned to honor victims, comfort families and thank emergency workers “for their heroic actions.”

That wasn’t the message that Trump wanted to deliver Wednesday morning as he ignored calls from community leaders and residents to stay away. Around midnight, he attacked Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic presidential candidate, on Twitter, mocking him for having a “phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage” and boasting that he “trounced him” when Trump held a rally in El Paso in February.

In a tweet Wednesday morning, Trump quoted a conservative television news outlet’s reporting that “the Dayton, Ohio, shooter had a history of supporting political figures like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and ANTIFA.”

But the president’s Twitter outbursts underscored the complaints of O’Rourke and others who have said Trump was not welcome in their communities because his presence would inflame tensions rather than soothe them. If the president has heard those complaints, he declined to change the combative tone he has embraced since the earliest days of his presidency.

On Monday, Trump delivered a short speech from a teleprompter in which he condemned “racism, bigotry and white supremacy” and said that “hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart and devours the soul.”

Before he departed Wednesday, he dismissed criticism about his use of divisive language. “I think my rhetoric brings people together,” he said. “Our country is doing really well.”

It is unclear which president will assert himself in Dayton and El Paso — a healer in chief who brings a disciplined embrace of consolation and a rejection of hate or a politically divisive chief executive who has spent years railing about the dangers from immigrants in the country illegally and stoking fear to rally his supporters.

Before leaving, he lashed out at the mayor of Dayton, calling her a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and of antifa, a radical leftist group. The president also rejected calls to abandon the way he talks about immigrants, saying that “illegal immigration is a terrible thing for this country” and insisting that “we have very many people coming in. They are pouring in to this country.”

Trump also used language that echoed his “both sides” comments after the neo-Nazi rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, saying Wednesday that “I’m concerned about the rise of any type of hate. I don’t like it. Any type of supremacy, whether it’s white supremacy or antifa.”

White House invites tech companies to discussion on ‘violent extremism.’

The White House will host an event with tech companies Friday aimed at discussing how to eradicate violent behavior online, but the president may not be in attendance.

“The White House has invited internet and technology companies for a discussion on violent extremism online,” Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said in a statement, adding that senior administration officials and “representatives of a range of companies” would participate.

He did not say which companies or officials would attend but said that it was a “staff-led” meeting. Facebook, Google and Twitter declined to comment about the meeting.

A person familiar with the event said that administration officials would be focused on violent behavior and not hate speech. In recent days, Trump has defended himself against widespread scrutiny over the effect his divisive rhetoric has on white supremacists and other extremists online.

The meeting highlights a growing discontent in Washington with technology companies. The White House and other Republicans have accused technology platforms — namely Google, Facebook and Twitter — of tilting the playing field against conservatives. The companies have repeatedly denied that is the case.

The giant technology platforms have also come under greater scrutiny for not doing enough to stamp out extremist and hateful content on their sites, while also failing to prevent the spread of misinformation during the 2016 presidential election.

Biden accuses Trump of ‘hate, racism and division.’

Former Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday prepared to ratchet up his criticism of Trump after the El Paso massacre carried out by a suspect who authorities say wrote a white supremacist screed.

“In both clear language and in code, this president has fanned the flames of white supremacy in this nation,” Biden will say, according to excerpts from remarks he planned to make in Burlington, Iowa.

“We have a president who has aligned himself with the darkest forces in this nation,” Biden will say. He will also say that Trump “offers no moral leadership,” has “no interest in unifying the nation” and that there is “no evidence the presidency has awakened his conscience in the least.”

“Instead,” Biden will say, “we have a president with a toxic tongue who has publicly and unapologetically embraced a political strategy of hate, racism and division.”

At the White House, Trump was asked to respond to another comment by Biden in which he said the president has more in common with George Wallace than George Washington.

“Well, Joe is a pretty incompetent guy,” Trump said. “I’ve watched his interviews. I’ve watched what he said and how he said it. And I wouldn’t have rated him very high in the first place. But Joe Biden has truly lost his fastball, that I could tell you.”

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., another candidate vying for the 2020 nomination, spoke Wednesday morning at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where a white supremacist killed nine people in 2015.

Booker urged Americans to embrace “courageous love” and appeared to choke up as he read the names of those who had died in the shooting four years ago.

“It’s with faith in God, in one another, and in who we can be that we come here together today,” he said, “not because of hate, but because of love.”

Democrats say ‘red flag’ laws will not be enough.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, said Wednesday that Democrats would insist that legislation to encourage states to adopt so-called “red flag laws” as a response to gun violence be accompanied by a House bill requiring background checks on all gun purchasers.

Red flag laws allow authorities to obtain a special type of protective order — known as an extreme risk protection order, or ERPO — to remove guns from people deemed dangerous. Republicans, including Trump, are embracing the concept, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is drafting a bill to develop a federal grant program to help states pass and implement such laws.

“We Democrats are not going to settle for half-measures so Republicans can feel better and try to push the issue of gun violence off to the side,” Schumer said. “Democrats in the Senate will seek to require that any ERPO bill that comes to the floor is accompanied by a vote on the House-passed universal background checks legislation.”

Trump told reporters he was open to expanding background checks for gun purchases. But Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader, has blocked consideration of the House bills.

The gunman’s motive in Dayton may not be tied to politics, authorities say.

Although the FBI is investigating “violent ideologies” that the Dayton gunman was exploring, authorities have said there was no evidence that his rampage had anything to do with his political views, which his friends have described as far-left.

The gunman, Connor Betts, who was killed by police, espoused leftist views online and in conversations with friends, promoting socialism and the idea that liberals should own guns. And a Twitter account that is believed to be his but has not been confirmed by authorities showed support for antifa, the loose group of people who call themselves “anti-fascists” and often believe that violence against people they view as “fascists” is justified.

In the wake of the mass shooting that killed nine and wounded more than two dozen others, conservatives have pointed out that the Twitter account that may be associated with the gunman also expressed support for Sanders and Warren, sharing one post that said they were the only two acceptable candidates in the race for president.

Earlier this week, a federal law enforcement official said the FBI was looking at whether the gunman was associated with incel, or involuntary celibate, groups, which are generally made up of misogynists who disparage women online, in part for refusing to have sex with them.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/07/us/politics/trump-el-paso-dayton-visits.html" id="82aed9d5-be04-33f8-af85-8d7b5cd5eb14">The New York Times</a>.

As Trump Visits Dayton, Protesters Gather

President Donald Trump on Wednesday visited the Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, Ohio, where White House officials said he planned to thank emergency and hospital workers and visit with families and victims of the city’s tragic shooting.

Around midnight, he attacked Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic presidential candidate, on Twitter, mocking him for having a “phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage” and boasting that he “trounced him” when Trump held a rally in El Paso in February.

In a tweet on Wednesday morning, the president attacked the “Failing New York Times” and the “Radical Left Democrats” over a headline in The Times. A few minutes later, Trump quoted a conservative television news outlet’s reporting that “the Dayton, Ohio, shooter had a history of supporting political figures like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and ANTIFA.”

But the president’s Twitter outbursts underscored the complaints of O’Rourke and others who have said Trump was not welcome in their communities because his presence would inflame tensions rather than soothe them.

Before he departed Wednesday, he lashed out at the mayor of Dayton, calling her a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and of antifa, a radical leftist group. The president also rejected calls to abandon the way he talks about immigrants, saying that “illegal immigration is a terrible thing for this country” and insisting that “we have very many people coming in. They are pouring in to this country.”

President Donald Trump arrived Wednesday morning at the Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, Ohio, where White House officials said he planned to thank emergency and hospital workers and visit with families and victims of the city’s tragic shooting.

Trump Visits Dayton and El Paso

Trump planned to visit El Paso, Texas, later in the day.

“I hope other news outlets will report this as opposed to Fake News,” Trump wrote. “Thank you!”

On Monday, Trump delivered a short speech from a teleprompter in which he condemned “racism, bigotry, and white supremacy” and said that “hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart, and devours the soul.”

Before he departed Wednesday, he said that “we’re going to take the opportunity to really congratulate the first responders.” And he dismissed criticism about his use of divisive language. “I think my rhetoric brings people together,” he said. “Our country is doing really well.”

It is unclear which president will assert himself in Dayton and El Paso — a healer in chief who brings a disciplined embrace of consolation and a rejection of hate, or a politically divisive chief executive who has spent years railing about the dangers from immigrants in the country illegally and stoking fear to rally his supporters.

Biden accuses Trump of “hate, racism and division.”

“Instead,” Biden will say, “we have a president with a toxic tongue who has publicly and unapologetically embraced a political strategy of hate, racism, and division.”

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., another candidate vying for the 2020 nomination, also spoke Wednesday morning at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where a white supremacist killed nine people in 2015.

Trump’s plans in Dayton are not clear.

Ninety minutes before his plane was scheduled to land, there were few obvious signs in downtown Dayton of a presidential visit on the horizon.

At the Courthouse Square, where some protesters had discussed gathering, only a handful of reporters were milling around at 9 a.m. South of Dayton, in suburban Miami Township, a video sign on the side of the road said “Welcome President Trump” and “#DaytonStrong.”

Many details of the president’s visit remained unclear even as his arrival grew imminent. There had been no announcement from city officials on where he would go, and whether he would speak publicly, during his time in the city.

A day earlier, Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton, a Democrat, said she planned to greet Trump, but also confront him about “how unhelpful he’s been on this.”

“His comments weren’t very helpful to the issue around guns,” Whaley told reporters Tuesday. “His rhetoric has been painful for many in our community.”

Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican, said Tuesday that he supported the president’s decision to visit.

“I think it’s always appropriate for a governor, a president to go where there’s sorrow, go where people are hurting,” DeWine said.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, said Wednesday that Democrats would insist that legislation to encourage states to adopt so-called “red flag laws” as a response gun violence be accompanied by a House bill requiring background checks on all gun purchasers.

In the wake of the mass shooting that killed nine and wounded more than two dozen others, conservatives have pointed out that the Twitter account that may be associated with the gunman also expressed support for Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sharing one post that said they were the only two acceptable candidates in the race for president.

Trump is going to Dayton in the morning and will visit El Paso later in the day. The White House has not released a full schedule of his activities in the two cities, but Tuesday evening, the president’s press secretary declared that the day would “be about honoring victims, comforting communities and thanking first responders and medical professionals for their heroic actions.”

As he left the White House to travel to the two cities, Trump dismissed his critics as nothing more than “political people that are trying to make points” and mocked them for being “very low in the polls.”

The president’s Twitter outbursts underscored the complaints of O’Rourke and others who have said Trump was not welcome in their communities because his presence would inflame tensions rather than soothe them.

President Donald Trump began a day set aside for healing by delivering a series of political grievances against liberals and the media, once again using Twitter on Wednesday to exhibit the divisive language that has prompted some in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, to protest his visits after horrific shootings in those cities.

Trump Heads to Dayton and El Paso

Ignoring the tweets he had sent out just hours before, Trump claimed that “as much as possible I try to stay out of that,” adding that “I don’t think it works. I would like to stay out of the political fray.”

It is unclear which president will show up in Dayton and El Paso — a healer in chief who brings a disciplined embrace of consolation and a rejection of hate, or a politically divisive chief executive who has spent years railing about the dangers from immigrants in the country illegally and stoking fear to rally his supporters.

Just a day after retreating from his threat to shut down the entire border with Mexico, Trump accepted a plaque from border agents and sheriffs in front of a 30-foot-tall section of border wall — the physical embodiment of his immigration agenda — and met with border officials, lawmakers and administration officials at the Border Patrol station.

“We’re really making progress at letting people know this is an emergency,” the president said. “It’s a colossal surge and it’s overwhelming our immigration system and we can’t let that happen.”

Critics argue that the wall is not a solution to the surge of families that have arrived in recent months, since most of the families are not trying to sneak into the country undetected. On the contrary, most are seeking Border Patrol agents to turn themselves in, either at the ports of entry or between them.

Asked Thursday night why the president was not using the national emergency he recently declared to seek funds to provide humanitarian relief to the families who have been apprehended recently, Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, conceded that the focus on the wall is, partly, a stunt.

“Well, I think part of that is just a — it’s an optic,” she told Chris Cuomo, the host of “Cuomo Prime Time” on CNN. “To have the president stand in front of the wall indicates immediately to any viewer that he’s at the border. But I think his message will be about the dual crisis and how we need Congress to act, to give us the authorities to address.”

Trump, however, hailed what he called the “tremendous impact” of the wall in Calexico and said that his administration expected to build 400 miles’ worth of wall in the next two years.

In fact, the small section of wall that Trump stood in front of is not evidence that the president is building the wall he repeatedly called for during his 2016 presidential campaign but merely an upgrade to an existing section of fencing. The 2-mile section was completed in October.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/us/politics/trump-border-wall.html" id="bfac9188-6209-3228-a67b-995ad81c6a2b">The New York Times</a>.

Trump Presses His Argument of a Border Crisis in California Visit

CALEXICO, Calif. — President Donald Trump traveled to this small border town two hours east of San Diego on Friday to highlight what he and his aides say is an out-of-control crisis caused by a surge of Central American families who have overwhelmed law enforcement facilities at the border.

But Trump insisted Friday that his efforts to seal off the border from unauthorized immigrants and asylum-seekers was necessary because “we don’t have room. That means you can’t take ‘em.”

“I don’t think anyone has ever expressed it like that, but I am expressing it like that,” Trump added. “When it’s full, it’s full.”

In fact, the small section of wall that Trump stood in front of — next to a field of solar panels — is not evidence that the president is building the wall he repeatedly called for during his 2016 presidential campaign but merely an upgrade to an existing section of fencing. The 2-mile section was completed in October.

Weeks after declaring a national emergency at the border because Congress refused to fund construction of his border wall, Trump recently threatened to close the legal ports of entry between Mexico and the United States — potentially disrupting billions of dollars’ worth of trade and halting the travel of a half-million people each day.

But on the eve of his trip here, Trump backed down in the face of hard criticism from the business community and top officials in his own party. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, predicted that a complete border shutdown would have a “potentially catastrophic economic impact” on the country.

Trump responded Thursday by initially saying he would give Mexico a year to stop Central American migrants from traversing Mexico on their way to the United States. He added that if Mexico did not do its part, he would first impose tariffs on Mexican cars before shutting down the border.

Later in the day, Trump denied that he had put off a border shutdown for a year, saying that it could still happen if he decided that Mexico was not doing enough to keep migrants from traveling to the United States.

“We’ll start with the tariffs and see what happens,” he said.

In his visit here, Trump thanked Mexico for deporting migrants at its southern border, which he said “they have never done before” in three decades, and suggested he had delayed closing the border because of their heightened efforts.

But it is false that Mexico only recently began enforcing its southern border at Trump’s urging, according to data, experts and the Mexican government. Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign minister, told reporters Tuesday that Mexico had been consistent in its immigration policies.

It deported 40,000 to 190,000 migrants every year from 2011 to 2016, data from Segob, Mexico’s internal affairs agency, shows. In 2016, Mexico deported nearly 150,000 migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala compared with 107,000 deportations of migrants from those three countries in 2018. In the first two months of 2019, Mexico deported more than 13,000 migrants from the countries.

Contrary to Trump’s repeated claims this week, Mexico’s immigration laws are not harsher or “stronger” than the United States; illegal crossing are decriminalized in Mexico and considered a minor offense. Experts said they were not aware of any changes in the laws or enforcement practices.

“On the contrary, the discourse of President López Obrador has been more humanitarian than that of the former president, granting work permits and making efforts to find last-minute shelters,” said Karla A. Valenzuela, a professor at Ibero-American University in Mexico City who specializes in migration.

Valenzuela said an uptick in detentions and removals in recent weeks was not necessarily indicative of intensified enforcement, but rather more linked to increased flows from Central America.

Meanwhile, the president’s re-election campaign released a video Friday blasting Democrats for their position on the border, a clear indication that Trump intends to use the issue of border security for his political benefit, no matter the facts on the ground.

The video shows leading Democratic presidential candidates, including Beto O’Rourke, Sen. Kamala Harris and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, mocking the idea of a wall at the border.

“We do not need any walls,” O’Rourke is shown saying. The headline in the video says, bluntly: “Democrats do not want to keep Americans safe” and adds: “It’s time for Democrats to stop playing political games with national security.”

A response from the Democratic National Committee assailed the president’s visit as nothing more than a photo opportunity, “to try and build nonexistent support for his unnecessary and ineffective border wall.”

“Instead of doing anything to address the issues that matter most to the people of Calexico, Trump is actually making things worse,” the committee said.

The president’s arrival in this small border town two hours east of San Diego is intended to highlight what the president and his aides say is an out-of-control crisis caused by a surge of Central American families who have overwhelmed law enforcement facilities.

The answer, he argues, is construction of a border wall and legal changes to allow the authorities to treat illegal border-crossers and asylum-seekers more strictly.

“The president himself has made it clear that this is a humanitarian crisis,” Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of Homeland Security, said Thursday night on CNN. “He recognizes that humanitarian crisis, and he’s trying to take it to the people who can fix it.”

As he flew from Washington aboard Air Force One, Trump tweeted his excitement at the prospect of seeing a section of his border wall in person.

“Will soon be landing in Calexico, California to look at a portion of the new WALL being built on our Southern Border,” Trump wrote. “Within two years we will have close to 400 miles built or under construction &amp; keeping our Country SAFE – not easy when the Dems are always fighting to stop you!”

Weeks after declaring a national emergency at the border because Congress refused to fund construction of his border wall, Trump had threatened to close the legal ports of entry between Mexico and the United States — potentially disrupting billions of dollars’ worth of trade and halting the travel of a half-million people each day.

But on the eve of his trip to the border, Trump backed down in the face of hard criticism from the business community and top officials in his own party. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, predicted that a complete border shutdown would have a “potentially catastrophic economic impact” on the country.

Trump responded on Thursday by initially saying he would give Mexico a year to stop Central American migrants from traversing Mexico on their way to the United States. And the president said that if Mexico did not do its part, he would first impose tariffs on Mexican cars before shutting down the border.

“The only thing frankly better, but less drastic than closing the border, is to tariff the cars coming in,” Trump said in the White House. “We’re going to give them a one-year warning, and if the drugs don’t stop or largely stop, we’ll put tariffs on Mexico and products, in particular cars.”

Later Thursday, Trump denied that he had put off a border shutdown for a year, saying that it could still happen if he decided that Mexico was not doing enough to keep migrants from traveling to the United States.

On Friday morning, Trump said on Twitter that Mexico had already changed its behavior.

“Mexico, for the first time in decades, is meaningfully apprehending illegals at THEIR Southern Border, before the long march up to the U.S.,” he wrote. “This is great and the way it should be.”

As he departed the White House for his trip, he again praised Mexico, suggesting to reporters that in the past four days, the country had been “very, very good.”

In Calexico, Trump will stand in front of a section of wall made out of tall steel slats that allow border agents to see through to the other side — a far cry from the concrete slab that the president once called for. He will be presented with a plaque that commemorates “the completion of the first section of President Trump’s border wall.”

In fact, the small section of wall that Trump will stand in front of is not evidence that the president is building the wall he repeatedly called for during his 2016 presidential campaign. The Calexico wall was merely an upgrade to an existing section of fencing. The 2-mile section of wall was completed in October.

Critics argue that the wall is not a solution to the surge of families that have arrived in recent months. Most of the families are not trying to sneak into the country undetected. On the contrary, most are seeking out border patrol agents to turn themselves in, either at the ports of entry or between them.

Asked on Thursday night why the president is not using his national emergency to seek funds to provide humanitarian relief to the families who have been apprehended recently, Nielsen conceded that the focus on the wall is, partly, a stunt.

In addition to seeing the wall, Trump is expected to receive a briefing from border patrol officials at the agency’s Calexico station. He will also participate in a round-table discussion about the border with local politicians and others.

Meanwhile, the president’s re-election campaign Friday released a video blasting Democrats for their position on the border, a clear indication that Trump intends to use the issue of border security for his political benefit no matter what the facts on the ground.

The video shows leading Democratic presidential candidates, including Beto O’Rourke, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, mocking the idea of a wall at the border.

A response from the Democratic National Committee assailed the president’s visit to Calexico as nothing more than a photo opportunity, “to try and build nonexistent support for his unnecessary and ineffective border wall. Instead of doing anything to address the issues that matter most to the people of Calexico, Trump is actually making things worse.”

Trump Heads to the Border After Backing Off His Threat to Close It

CALEXICO, Calif. — President Donald Trump on Friday will stand in front of a 30-foot-tall section of border wall — the physical embodiment of his immigration agenda — just a day after retreating from his threat to shut down the entire border with Mexico.

Weeks after declaring a national emergency at the border because Congress refused to fund construction of his border wall, Trump had threatened to close the legal ports of entry between Mexico and the United States. But on the eve of his trip to the border, Trump backed down in the face of hard criticism from the business community and top officials in his own party.

On Friday morning, Trump said on Twitter that Mexico had already changed its behavior. “Mexico, for the first time in decades, is meaningfully apprehending illegals at THEIR Southern Border, before the long march up to the U.S.,” he wrote. “This is great and the way it should be.”

In Calexico, Trump will stand in front of a section of wall made out of tall steel slats. He will be presented with a plaque that commemorates “the completion of the first section of President Trump’s border wall.” The 2-mile section of wall is an upgrade to an existing section of fencing, completed in October.

In other words, he wants more immigrants.

“I want people to come into our country, in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally,” Trump ad-libbed last month during his State of the Union address.

Comments like those from the president have ignited furious criticism from his hard-line, anti-immigrant supporters who accuse him of caving to demands for cheap foreign labor from corporations, establishment Republicans and big donors while abandoning his election promise to protect his working-class supporters from the effects of globalism.

“This is clearly a betrayal of what immigration hawks hoped the Trump administration would be for,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates cutting legal immigration by more than half. He warned that Trump was in danger of being “not even that different from a conventional Republican.”

Breitbart News, a conservative website that promotes anti-immigrant messaging, on Thursday published the latest in a series of articles attacking Trump for catering to big business at the expense of the Americans who put him in the Oval Office. “Trump Requests ‘More’ Foreign Workers as Southern Border Gets Overrun,” the site blared on its home page.

“That Mr. Trump would advance the interests of the global elite ahead of our citizens would be a tragic reversal on any day,” Lou Dobbs, the Fox News host, said in a televised rant against the president Wednesday evening on the Fox Business Channel. “The White House has simply lost its way.”

Corporations and influential corporate conservatives such as Charles Koch and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have long urged the president to help them recruit the talent they need by expanding the number of workers who can enter the United States from other countries.

That has become more urgent as the economy has improved and as declining unemployment has made it harder for companies to find workers. To assuage their concerns, Trump has increasingly tailored his immigration talking points to cater to the needs of business executives such as those who attended a business round table Wednesday at the White House.

“We’re going to have a lot of people coming into the country. We want a lot of people coming in. And we need it,” Trump said as he sat next to Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, and other executives. “We want to have the companies grow, and the only way they’re going to grow is if we give them the workers, and the only way we’re going to have the workers is to do exactly what we’re doing.”

But that message runs counter to the hard-line immigration image that Trump has carefully nurtured — most recently by shutting the government down for 35 days in a failed attempt to pressure Congress to fund a wall on the Mexican border.

Trump won the White House in no small part by embracing anti-immigrant messaging that tapped into the economic fears of blue-collar workers upset about losing their jobs to foreign workers. Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, he attacked unauthorized immigrants as “rapists and murderers” and called for a “big, beautiful wall” along the border with Mexico.

Since becoming president, Trump has aggressively sought to crack down on illegal border crossings, increase deportations, cut the number of refugees allowed into the United States and make it harder for migrants to claim asylum. He has complained about drug dealers, gangs and members of Central American caravans pouring across the border. And last summer, his administration separated thousands of migrant children from their parents in an effort to deter Central American families from trying to seek refuge in the United States.

The harsh record — and comments by Trump that disparaged African nations in vulgar terms and suggested that Haitian immigrants “all have AIDS” — has earned him the enmity of Democrats and immigration activists, who call him a racist president.

It is unclear whether Trump will follow through on his recent, pro-business messaging. Many of the president’s aides — including Stephen Miller, his top immigration adviser in the White House — agree with the hard-line activists about the need to lower legal immigration.

In 2017, Trump endorsed the RAISE Act, a Republican Senate bill that would reduce legal immigration by as much as 50 percent. And the administration is considering a proposal to cut immigration by denying work authorizations, known as H-4 permits, to almost 100,000 spouses of immigrants who are brought in by companies to work legally in the United States.

But even so, some of the nation’s most hard-line anti-immigration activists have become increasingly nervous that Trump might waver on their primary concern — the need to shrink the number of immigrants, currently 1.1 million, who enter the United States each year.

They argue that tight labor markets make it exactly the wrong time to allow more foreign workers to compete with Americans. Chris Chmielenski, deputy director of NumbersUSA, which lobbies for lower legal immigration, said companies should be pressured to hire more Americans instead.

“Anything we do now to bring in more foreign workers could actually reverse some of the economic gains over the last four years,” Chmielenski said. “We’re absolutely concerned. We feel this isn’t how he ran on the issue.”

Last week, in an effort to communicate that message directly to Trump, NumbersUSA began airing an ad on Fox News Channel in the hopes that the president would get the message that his supporters do not want to let in more than 1 million immigrants each year.

“The majority of voters say the number should be cut to 500,000 or less,” the ad said. “Americans want less immigration.”

Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, said companies that no longer have access to foreign workers would have no choice but to turn to Americans who are still struggling to find work: people with disabilities, teenagers, older people and even former convicts.

He also said that modest increases in wages for workers would evaporate if companies were allowed to simply tap an unlimited pool of lower-paid workers from other countries.

“If you want wages to go up, you don’t import more foreign labor,” Krikorian said.

Business groups dispute that analysis. They argue that immigration expands the amount of business activity in the United States, adding jobs and increasing wages for the vast majority of American workers.

“Our country has benefited tremendously from welcoming people who have contributed to our economy, our communities, across the board,” said James Davis, a spokesman for the Koch network. “We want to welcome in everyone who wants to contribute to our society. We want to see more legal immigration.”

Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a pro-immigration advocacy group that started with backing from Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, said “immigrants and immigration increase economic growth, they increase economic productivity and they increase wages for the overwhelming number of native-born Americans.”

Schulte, whose group has been highly critical of Trump’s anti-immigrant messaging and policies, welcomed the president’s recognition that legal immigration is a positive thing for the nation’s economy.

But he cautioned that Trump must be measured by his actions not his words. He called on the president to halt the effort to deny the H-4 work permits to immigrant spouses.

“He should stop trying to revoke the H-4 rule,” Schulte said. “Increasing legal immigration would help native-born Americans. Unfortunately, the record has been one bent on cutting overall immigration levels.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/us/politics/trump-anti-immigration-groups-betrayal.html" id="edc9cb8b-7faf-3fcd-a96e-10784197c340">The New York Times</a>.

WASHINGTON — For months, President Donald Trump has been railing about the urgent need for a wall to protect against what he calls “an invasion” of immigrants illegally flooding across the southwestern border. But he has also been delivering another message: “We need workers,” he told a group of activists recently.

Anti-Immigration Groups See Trump's Calls for More Legal Immigrants as a Betrayal

“I want people to come into our country, in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally,” Trump ad-libbed during his State of the Union address last month.

Comments like those from the president have ignited furious criticism from his hard-line, anti-immigrant supporters who accuse Trump of caving to demands for cheap foreign labor from corporations, establishment Republicans and big donors while abandoning his election promise to protect his working-class supporters from the effects of globalism.

Breitbart News, a conservative website that promotes anti-immigrant rhetoric, on Thursday published the latest in a series of articles attacking Trump for catering to big business at the expense of the Americans who put him in the Oval Office. “Trump Requests ‘More’ Foreign Workers as Southern Border Gets Overrun,” the site blared on its home page.

Corporations and influential corporate conservatives such as Charles G. Koch and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have long urged the president to help them recruit the talent they need by expanding the number of workers who can enter the United States from other countries.

That has become more urgent as the economy has improved and declining unemployment has made it harder for companies to find workers. To assuage their concerns, Trump has increasingly tailored his immigration rhetoric to cater to the needs of business executives such as those who attended a business round table at the White House on Wednesday.

“We’re going to have a lot of people coming into the country. We want a lot of people coming in. And we need it,” Trump said as he sat next to Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, and other executives. “We want to have the companies grow, and the only way they’re going to grow is if we give them the workers, and the only way we’re going to have the workers is to do exactly what we’re doing.”

Trump won the White House in no small part by embracing anti-immigrant rhetoric that tapped into the economic fears of blue-collar workers upset about losing their jobs to foreign workers. Throughout the 2016 campaign, he attacked unauthorized immigrants as “rapists and murderers” and called for a “big, beautiful wall” across the border with Mexico.

Since becoming president, Trump has aggressively sought to crack down on illegal border crossings, increase deportations, slash the number of refugees allowed into the United States and make it harder for migrants to claim asylum. He has complained about drug dealers, gangs and members of Central American caravans pouring across the border. And last summer, his administration separated thousands of migrant children from their parents in an effort to deter Central American families from trying to seek refuge in the United States.

It is unclear whether Trump will actually follow through on his recent, pro-business rhetoric. Many of the president’s aides — including Stephen Miller, his top immigration adviser in the White House — agree with the hard-line activists about the need to lower legal immigration.

In 2017, Trump endorsed the RAISE Act, a Republican Senate bill that would reduce legal immigration as much as 50 percent. And the administration is considering a proposal to slash immigration by denying work authorizations, known as H-4 permits, to almost 100,000 spouses of immigrants who are brought in by companies to work legally in the United States.

But even so, some of the nation’s most hard-line anti-immigration activists have become increasingly nervous that Trump might waver on their primary concern — the need to shrink the 1.1 million immigrants who enter the United States each year.

They argue that tight labor markets make it exactly the wrong time to allow more foreign workers to compete with Americans. Chris Chmielenski, deputy director for NumbersUSA, which lobbies for lower legal immigration, said companies should be pressured to hire more Americans instead.

Last week, in an effort to communicate that message directly to Trump, NumbersUSA began airing a television ad on Fox News Channel in the hopes that the president would get the message that his supporters do not want to let in more than 1 million immigrants each year.

Krikorian said companies that no longer have access to foreign workers would have no choice but to turn to Americans who are still struggling to find work: the disabled, teenagers, older people and even ex-convicts.

Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a pro-immigration advocacy group started with backing from Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, said “immigrants and immigration increase economic growth, they increase economic productivity and they increase wages for the overwhelming number of native-born Americans.”

Schulte, whose group has been highly critical of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, welcomed the president’s recognition that legal immigration is a positive thing for the nation’s economy.

WASHINGTON — For months, President Donald Trump has been railing about the urgent need for a wall to protect against what he calls “an invasion” of immigrants illegally flooding across the southern border. But he has also been delivering another message: “We need workers,” he told a group of activists recently.

The president made the announcement during a rambling two-hour speech to activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, but he did not provide any details about the possible executive order. Several White House officials did not respond to emails or telephone calls seeking additional information.

The White House did not respond to questions about when the president might sign the order.

But Trump electrified the crowd, which included many college-age conservatives, who leapt to their feet when he pledged to hold school administrators accountable for ensuring that conservatives were permitted to express their views on campuses, often places where liberals outnumber them.

As he made the announcement, the president cited the case of Hayden Williams, a young activist who was beaten up last month as he was recruiting for a conservative organization at the University of California at Berkeley.

“If they want our dollars, and we give it to them by the billions, they’ve got to allow people like Hayden and many great young people, and old people, to speak,” Trump said.

Trump invited Williams, who was in the audience, to address the crowd briefly, calling him strong and urging him to sue the university because of the episode. Williams thanked the president for supporting young conservatives such as himself.

The issue of free speech on college campuses has for years been a cause célèbre among young conservative activists, who point to instances around the country in which conservative voices have been shunned by liberal students and professors.

It is unclear how Trump’s executive order would change that dynamic, though he hinted that universities and colleges would have to do more to prevent such demonstrations or risk the loss of grant money that the institutions receive from the federal government to support research.

It is also unclear how much the president can withhold federal aid to colleges without congressional action.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/us/politics/trump-free-speech-colleges.html" id="6c279b7a-8771-3571-a950-c9a37f24aa97">The New York Times</a>.

Trump Says He Will Sign Free Speech Order for College Campuses

OXON HILL, Md. — President Donald Trump said Saturday that he planned to issue an executive order that would help guarantee free speech at colleges and universities by putting their federal aid at risk if they do not protect the viewpoints of students of all political stripes.

Michael D. Shear

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