President Trump has told lawmakers that he is calling off Thursday’s congressional picnic as his administration deals with bipartisan outrage over the separation of immigrant families at the border.
“I was just walking over to the Oval Office and I said, ‘You know, it doesn’t feel right to have a picnic for Congress when we’re working on doing something very important,’” Trump told congressmen in a meeting at the White House. “We’ll make it another time when things are going extremely well.”
As Congress scrambled to find a way to end the family separations, Trump signaled Wednesday that he plans to sign an executive order mandating that immigrant families at the southern border be kept together.
“We’re going to keep families together but we still have to maintain toughness or our country will be overrun by people, by crime, by all of the things that we don’t stand for and that we don’t want,” the president said.
Over 2,000 children have been separated from their parents and guardians since the policy was introduced in May.
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