President Donald Trump said Friday during a Cabinet meeting that scenes of migrants flooding into Spain’s enclave of Ceuta from Morocco looked like a “catastrophe,” but that the U.S. could see worse in the future if Democrats regain power.
“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. And that same thing is going to happen to us if the Republicans don’t get elected,” Trump said Friday at Camp David. “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. But if we didn’t have that, forget it. 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.”
“And when I watched it, I said, boy, I said, ‘I’m going to say it because I knew you were going to be at Camp David.’ And I say, ‘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,” the president continued. “They’re coming in by the tens of thousands. It’s just invading the country. And what 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 three-mile swim or however they got in.”
“But nobody’s seen anything like it. That will look good compared to what’s going to happen to the United States,” Trump also said. “The biggest thing, the worst thing that Biden did is allowing 25 million people into our country, because many of those people are criminals. They’re murderers,” Trump also said. “A lot of them are gone now. We got them out. But they allowed people to come into this country that you can’t allow to come into a country.”
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Trump made similar comments to Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich earlier Friday morning.
“It’s terrible. Remember that picture. That’s going to be us in three years if the wrong side gets in,” Trump said.
“If the Democrats get in, you will not live a very good life,” he warned.
U.S. border security has remained a key plank of the president’s campaign and policy focus throughout his political career.
An English translation of a Friday Spanish-language post on X from Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said, “The Government will guarantee the safety of the residents of Ceuta, intensifying the presence of the Security Forces and Corps on the city’s streets.” The post also included a video of him delivering remarks in Spanish.
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Ceuta, which is located along the northwestern African coast and borders Morocco, is not attached to mainland Spain.
“Additionally, we will deploy a physical containment barrier in the sea to facilitate repatriation at the border, in compliance with the Supreme Court ruling. We will expedite the repatriation files of the migrants who arrived irregularly. And we will maintain cooperation with the Moroccan authorities to continue fighting against the mafias that traffic in human beings,” the prime minister’s post added.
Around 60,000 migrants had ventured from Morocco to Ceuta over the past 24 hours, Cueta President Juan Jesús Vivas said on Friday.
At least 41 migrants lost their lives.
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Many young Moroccans who crossed into Ceuta told The Associated Press that they had hoped to find better work opportunities in Spain but were returning given the mayhem in Ceuta.
“There’s nothing at home. I’d have to work 12-hour shifts for a meager wage. That’s why I came here,” said 21-year-old Abdulah Buji, who hails from the city of Tetouan. “But I haven’t found any opportunities here either, so I have to go back.”
Moroccan police used water cannons and fired warning shots into the air to prevent migrants from crossing into Ceuta, according to rights groups in Morocco.
Authorities in Ceuta and Madrid have linked the border surge to a recent decision by the Spanish Supreme Court, which ruled that migrants arriving by sea could not be summarily deported, unlike those who cross by land or climb the border fence.
Sánchez said migrant smugglers misinterpreted the ruling.
The interpretation of the Supreme Court’s ruling “spread like wildfire over the past few hours through the networks of human trafficking organizations,” triggering the surge, Sánchez said.
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The Spanish Interior Ministry issued its own numbers not long after Vivas spoke, estimating that some 50,000 individuals had come from Morocco since Thursday. It noted that 37,500 had already returned, with hundreds of others heading back to Morocco by the hour.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
