The White House blamed the left-wing policies of Spain’s socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez for opening the door to more than 60,000 migrants who flooded into the Spanish town of Ceuta from Morocco this week.
“President Trump has long warned Europe what would happen if they continue to implement far-left, globalist policies, including enabling mass migration,” White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told Fox News on Thursday.
“Spain and other countries who have adopted this destructive philosophy should immediately reverse course or risk their own demise,” she advised.
“You know I saw Spain yesterday, and I watched the catastrophe that took place. It looks like an invasion of a country by hundreds of thousands of people,” President Donald Trump said on Friday during a cabinet meeting at Camp David.
“And that same thing is going to happen to us if the Republicans don’t get elected. Except worse, much bigger, much easier to get into, despite the fact that we have built thousands of miles of wall, which I said we were going to do,” he added.
“But if we didn’t have that, forget it,” he said. “But we have the safest border in the world. If we’re not in office, our country will be invaded at levels that made Spain look small time.”
“That’s going to be a talking point for the midterms, because when you look at what happened to Spain, they don’t know what to do. And it’s happening again today. They’re coming in by the tens of thousands. It’s just invading the country,” he said.
“That is weak law, bad management, but very liberal law. They passed a couple of laws and people read, you know, people are smart. They read from other countries, and they swam that 3-mile swim or however they got in,” he said.
Trump made the same point during an interview with Fox News senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich on Friday.
“It’s terrible. Remember that picture. That’s going to be us in three years if the wrong side gets in. If the Democrats get in, you will not live a very good life,” he cautioned.
The Spanish government claimed on Friday that 48,300 of the estimated 50,000 migrants who overran Ceuta have “already turned and gone back.”
But the government of Ceuta said the total number of migrants was much higher than the central government’s estimate, with up to 60,000 entering the area from Thursday on.
Reuters said on Friday that “several hundred people could be seen returning to Morocco through border posts and holes in the fence.” Some of these migrants told reporters they were going back because they could not find food and shelter in Ceuta.
Prime Minister Sanchez denounced the migrant wave as a “violation of Spain’s territorial integrity” on Friday, and claimed his officials would expedite “repatriation” of the illegals. Sanchez claimed the wave was unleashed by human smugglers spreading false information online about Spain’s borders being open.