President Donald Trump has reiterated his frustration at laws granting due process to illegal immigrants and says people should be turned away at the border, as expectations faded for a speedy fix in the US Congress to the border crisis.
Heavily criticised for a policy that led to more than 2000 children being separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border, Trump defended his "zero tolerance" immigration policy, as government agencies struggle to address its ramifications.
"Hiring many thousands of judges, and going through a long and complicated legal process, is not the way to go - will always be disfunctional (sic)," Trump said in a tweet on Monday.
"People must simply be stopped at the Border and told they cannot come into the US illegally. Children brought back to their country."
Trump expressed a similar view on Sunday, saying in a tweet that "We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country" and they should be sent home with no judges or court cases.
Democrats have accused Trump of wanting to circumvent the US Constitution's guarantee of due process for those accused of crimes.
Trump faced a global outcry, including criticism from some in his own Republican Party, this month over migrant children who were separated from their parents because of the administration's two-month old policy of seeking to detain and prosecute everyone caught entering the country illegally.
The president caved on Wednesday, issuing an executive order that ended the separations. But the zero tolerance policy remains in place, raising questions about where to house families detained at the border and how to process them speedily. Despite his order, the government has yet to reunite more than 2,000 children with their parents.
An immigrant child looks out from a US Border Patrol bus leaving as protesters fill the streets. Source: AP
Rather than hire more judges to adjudicate the cases of illegal immigrants and clear a backlog, Trump wants fewer border-crossers to ease the burden on the court system.
Guatemalan children, some as young as five, are being held in a dozen shelters in the northeastern US while their parents have already been deported, Guatemalan consulate official Pedro Tzunun in New York told Reuters.
"If you're sending a parent home, why are you keeping the children?" said Jazmin Carrillo, spokeswoman for the consulate. "We don't understand how this can be possible."
The border crisis has intensified Democrats' anger with Trump and deepened a partisan divide on Capitol Hill. Republicans control congress but are not united around a single immigration measure and a divide between moderates and conservatives has dampened prospects for a compromise.
Mattis confirms migrant housing
United States Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis confirmed that the US military is preparing to house immigrants at Fort Bliss and Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas, in the latest sign of a growing US military support role for President Donald Trump's immigration policies.
Fort Bliss is an Army base in El Paso, Texas while Goodfellow Air Base is located in San Angelo, Texas.
The US military, and Mattis in particular, have stressed that it is simply providing logistical support to the Department of Homeland Security, which deals with immigration issues.
Last week the US military said it had been asked by the government to get ready to house up to 20,000 immigrant children.
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