Businessman and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump said Wednesday he’s heard from five different sources that Mexico is purposely sending its criminals into the United States, but that he thinks Mexico is more upset with him for talking about poor trade deals.
“Illegal immigrants are causing tremendous problems coming in — I want legal immigrants,” Mr. Trump said via phone on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Illegal immigrants are causing tremendous problems. … There’s crime, it’s a crime wave, it’s a disaster.”
“Look, as far as I’m concerned, I hire — I have hundreds and hundreds of Mexicans working for me. I love the Mexican people — I love their spirit. The problem we’re having with Mexico is that their government officials and negotiators are far smarter than ours, like from a different planet,” he said. “And they are negotiating deals, trade deals, the border, everything else, we are getting the short end of the stick in every single instance, and we are having a big problem.”
“Mexico is sending a lot of their people over that they don’t want, and that includes people that should be in Mexican prison, and you know it and I know it and nobody wants to talk about it,” Mr. Trump said.
Asked how he knows the Mexican government is sending people over, he said: “Because I’ve heard it from five different sources. And if you speak to the border guards, who I’ve spoken to many of, if you speak to border guards, and these guys are terrific, they’re almost crying, they’ve almost got tears in their eyes when they explain that they’re not allowed to do their job.”
Asked by Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin who his five sources are, Mr. Trump replied: “I’ll reveal my sources when you reveal your sources, Mark.”
“I have a lot of information on it, and so does everyone else — you probably do too, and for some reason, they don’t want to put out this information,” Mr. Trump continued. “If you remember many years ago when Fidel Castro opened his prisons and sent the people over, and everybody knew it, we never sent ’em back, we took all of these prisoners — Mexico in a far more sophisticated way is doing something very similar.”
He said Mexico is more upset with him because “I’m revealing how bad the trade deals are.”
“I think they’re more concerned with that than they are with what I’m saying on the border. … Everybody’s going into Mexico, and we’re sucking jobs right out of our country,” Mr. Trump said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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