SAN DIEGO (CNS) - Attorney General Jeff Sessions will become the latest Trump Administration official to visit the San Diego border area when he arrives today to discuss the administration's anti-immigration agenda.
Sessions will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. at an undisclosed location with Thomas D. Homan, deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Justice Department officials said Sessions and Homan will discuss ``the immigration enforcement actions'' of President Donald Trump's administration.
The trip will mark the fourth time a high-ranking Trump Administration official has visited the California-Mexico border region in recent months. Trump himself was in Otay Mesa in March to survey prototypes of the border wall, which was a key promise of his anti-immigration presidential campaign. On April 18, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen visited Calexico in Imperial County, where a replacement border barrier has been under construction since the Obama Administration was in power. Vice President Mike Pence also went to Calexico last Monday.
While in the Imperial Valley, Pence spoke to Homeland Security and Border Patrol employees at the El Centro Border Patrol Station to discuss plans for the proposed wall and to call for tougher controls on immigration. He advocated ending migration based on family reunification and claimed that a highly publicized immigrant caravan of Central American asylum-seekers was ``undermining the laws of this country and the sovereignty of the United States.''
Sessions is also expected to call for tougher immigration enforcement, with his visit coming a week after the caravan, with fewer than 200 migrants, arrived at the U.S. border in Tijuana following a roughly monthlong trek through Mexico. The members of the Pueblo Sin Fronteras caravan -- which came under scrutiny when Trump began tweeting about it on Easter Sunday -- have since begun the process of seeking asylum in the United States.
The attorney general already spoke out about the immigrant caravan once last week when federal prosecutors alleged that 11 of the immigrants had tried to cross the border illegally under the cover of darkness.
``When respect for the rule of law diminishes, so too does our ability to protect our great nation, its borders and its citizens,'' Sessions said in a statement. ``The United States will not stand by as our immigration laws are ignored and our nation's safety is jeopardized.
``U.S. Attorney Adam Braverman and his team should be commended for quickly filing illegal entry charges for individuals apprehended along the southwestern border. We will continue to work with our partners in each U.S. Attorney's offices to aggressively pursue prosecutions of criminal illegal entry.''
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