FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 19, 2019
Contact: Emily Phelps | press@indivisible.org
Washington, DC—The Indivisible Project’s national policy director Angel Padilla released the following statement in response to Trump’s phony border wall offer:
“What we saw tonight was another sham offer by Donald Trump that proves that he’s still not serious about ending the crisis that he created. Nearly a month into the longest government shutdown in history, he continues to get in the way of paychecks for thousands of American families. We need to open the government first, before talk of anything else.
“The fact is this is just another desperate attempt by Trump to use immigrant youth as hostages in order to force Congress to pay his ransom. It wouldn’t even provide real relief for them. It doesn’t provide permanent relief for the hundreds of thousands of Dreamers that he single-handedly put in jeopardy. It provides no permanent relief for hundreds of thousands of TPS holders whose protections Trump revoked. He doesn’t need Congress to provide relief to these families — he could do it today, if he wanted to. The fact is, he doesn’t.
“The price for this is too high to accept. Trump is asking for more money to cage and separate families. He is asking for Congress to pay for a useless wall that would devastate border communities and the environment. It’s a bad offer, plain and simple. And, taking it would reward his hostage-taking approach to legislating. If we don’t stop him now, he’ll just continue to take more hostages.
“In his speech today, Donald Trump called for political courage. He’s right, we do need political courage. We need Republicans to stand up to his racist, anti-immigrant agenda, and demand that Mitch McConnell immediately vote to reopen the government without paying Trump’s ransom. The most urgent thing we need to do right now is end Trump’s shutdown.”
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