President Donald Trump is spreading a "falsehood" that Democrats believe in open borders, and is stoking fears over the migrant caravan heading through Mexico to divert votes, Sen. Chris Coons claimed Tuesday.
"We voted for and co-sponsored bills in the Senate that would invest significantly in new border security," the Delaware Democrat told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"The president rejected that, and I think he's driving a false negative on immigration."
Coons also criticized the plans to send 5,200 troops to the southern border to head off the caravan.
"That's as many troops as we have deployed in the fight against ISIS," he said. "I'll tell you it is not the right comparison and this is an attempt to distract us from the votes that are to be cast just a week from today in our election."
The nation does need to have strong borders and a fix for its broken immigration system, the senators said, but Trump's decision to declare a national emergency based on "a slow moving group of women and children fleeing violence in Central America" is wrong, said Coons.
"(It) is an attempt to distract us from what is the real threat that millions of Americans will lose access to healthcare if the Republicans retain control of the House and the Senate and are able to move ahead with another attempt to repeal the protections of the Affordable Care Act," he said.
"Fixing our immigration system is something the president could have done had he chosen to when a bipartisan group of us presented him with a real solution but he didn't want that. What he wanted was an election issue and that's what he's turning this into."
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