US President Donald Trump has defended his decision to not let survivors of Hurricane Dorian enter the US, claiming the storm-ravaged Bahamas is full of “very bad gang members”.
On Sunday, several hundred Bahamians were ejected from a ferry bound for Florida because they didn’t have US visas.
According to Miami-based investigative journalist Brian Entin, who has been reporting on the devastating hurricane, Customs and Border Protection officers stopped the storm survivors - some of them children - from entering the US and removed them from the ferry.
President Donald Trump told reporters there are "some very bad people and some very bad gang members and some very, very bad drug dealers" in the Bahamas. Source: AP
Senior US immigration officials have since said the agents mistakenly stopped the survivors.
But speaking to reporters at the White House on Tuesday, Mr Trump – who has made a hardline stance on immigration a centrepiece of his presidency – declared “everyone needs totally proper documentation”.
"Look, the Bahamas has some tremendous problems with people going to the Bahamas that weren't supposed to be there," Mr Trump said.
"I don't want to allow people that weren't supposed to be in the Bahamas to come into the United States, including some very bad people and some very bad gang members and some very, very bad drug dealers."
The president did not provide any evidence or cite any sources after making his claim about “very bad” people in the Bahamas, which was hammered by Hurricane Dorian last week.
CNN quoted US’s customs and border agency spokesperson Michael Silva as saying the ferry operator did not properly coordinate with evacuation efforts before embarking for the US.
“We’re there to facilitate and accommodate that process in an orderly fashion, according to regulation and protocol. However, Balearia (the ferry operator) did not do that,” Mr Silva told CNN.
Evacuees wait for transportation to leave Marsh Harbour Port on Abaco Island. Source: ABACA
“We asked them to coordinate ahead of time. They did not do that.”
Later, the US Customs and Border Protection’s acting commissioner Mark Morgan said the incident was a mistake.
"If your life is in jeopardy in the Bahamas... you're going to be allowed into the United States,” he said, but adding that was provided the people arriving in the US were not deemed a threat.
British military personnel from the British Royal Navy Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) ship Mounts Bay, delivering aid to the community of Fox Town. Source: BRITISH MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
This is not the first time Mr Trump has denounced migrants coming to the US since he took office in 2016. He built his presidential campaign around building a wall to stop illegal immigration from Mexico and while announcing his candidacy in June 2015, Mr Trump made derogatory statements about immigrants from Mexico similar to what he said about Dorian survivors, warning they were bringing "drugs" and "crime," and were "rapists”.
The comments were widely denounced by Republicans and Democrats alike.
This week, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke slammed the move to turn away Bahamians from the US border, tweeting that it was the “height of cruelty”.
“This administration has said the words on the Statue of Liberty should be rewritten, and in their actions, they are already changing who we are as a country,” he said.
“It’s on us to prove we’re better than this.”
Republican politicians have also called on the president to do more, including Republican Florida Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, who have demanded Mr Trump make it easier for Bahamians to enter the US without normal identification.
The Bahamas recovers after horror hurricane
Authorities in the Bahamas say the death toll from Hurricane Dorian has now risen to 45, a week after the archipelago was battered by the wild weather.
The death toll from Dorian is expected to keep rising as authorities pick through the debris of houses totally flattened by fierce winds that also picked up and hurled cars and trees.
Survivors collect belongings in the wake of the fierce hurricane. Source: AP
Normally, hurricanes blow through the Bahamas in a matter of hours. But Dorian paused for three days over the northern edge of the archipelago, destroying buildings and infrastructure on Grand Bahama and Abaco and leaving only rubble.
An estimated 70,000 people have been left without a roof over their heads.
Bahamas Prime Minister Hubert Minnis has warned the capital of Nassau could not just take in the entire population of Abaco island and that the government plans to set up temporary shelters in areas hit hardest by the hurricane.
The National Emergency Management Agency said 2,500 people had been evacuated from the islands since the hurricane hit, most of them from Abaco.
Three hundred and seventy have found refuge in a shelter set up in the Kendal Isaacs school, where another 300 people were due to be sent on Monday.
Homes lay in ruins one week after Hurricane Dorian hit The Mudd neighborhood, in the Marsh Harbor area of Abaco, Bahamas. Source: AP
Three other shelters set up in Nassau were already filled to capacity by Sunday, NEMA said.
The government is also considering setting up "mass shelters" using tents and shipping containers. And it is asking residents of Nassau - which was spared the full impact of the storm - to accommodate the refugees.
With AFP.
