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AFP
WASHINGTON
US President Donald Trump threatened on Thursday to call up the military and close the US-Mexican border against an"onslaught"of migrants, stepping up anti-immigrant rhetoric ahead of congressional elections.
As several thousand Hondurans made their way through Central America toward the US border, Trump blamed Democrats for an"assault on our country by Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador"with a caravan"INCLUDING MANY CRIMINALS."
"I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught - and if unable to do so I will call up the US Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!"
Trump has made his call for a wall on the southern border a signature issue of his two-year presidency, but Thursday's tweet storm was especially fierce.
Trump suggested he was even prepared to put at risk the recently renegotiated North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Mexico, the United States and Canada, redubbed as USMCA.
"The assault on our country at our Southern Border, including the Criminal elements and DRUGS pouring in, is far more important to me, as President, than Trade or the USMCA,"he said.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, meanwhile, is embarking on a tour of the region that will take him to Panama on Thursday and to Mexico Friday.
The Mexican visit is important for future relations because it comes just ahead of the inauguration in December of President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico's foreign minister designate, downplayed Trump's comments as aimed at his domestic political base.
"The position of President Trump is the one he has always raised, I do not see him as anything surprising, I would be surprised by a different position,"Ebrard told local radio station Radio Centro.
"It was predictable and also the election process is very close, so he is making a political calculation,"he added.
The president's message was part of a broad strategy to crack down on illegal immigrants and tighten rules for legal migrants.
Barely a week goes by without Trump warning about the danger posed by ultra-violent Central American gangs like MS-13, while chants of"build the wall"are a staple of his pre-midterms campaign rallies.
The latest focus is on some 2,000 Hondurans who departed Saturday from the city of San Pedro Sula in a caravan headed for the US border.
A first group of several hundred Honduran migrants arrived late on Wednesday on the Guatemalan-Mexican border, where they overflowed a shelter in the town of Tecun Uman, leaving many to sleep in the town square or on the street, an AFP correspondent said.
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19/10/2018
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