Remarks by President Trump After Meeting with Congressional Leadership on Border Security | Eastern North Carolina Now

    THE PRESIDENT: Oh, he's been great. He's been really fantastic. Mitch McConnell - first of all, he was here. He was with us for hours at the meeting.

    Q Why he is not here in the Rose Garden right now?

    THE PRESIDENT: Because he's running the Senate. I mean, Mitch McConnell has been fantastic. He has been really great. He's right at the top of everything that we're doing, and he's really been fantastic.

    Kirstjen, do you want to answer that question about the terrorists, please?


    SECRETARY NIELSEN: Sure. So, obviously, I can't get into classified information. But what we do know is we've stopped - CBP has stopped over 3,000, what we call, special-interest aliens trying to come into the country on the southern border. Those are aliens who the intel community has identified are of concern. They either have travel patterns that are identified as terrorist travel patterns, or they have known or suspected ties to terrorism.

    So we have 3,000 that we know about. I think what the President continues to make clear is it's our sovereign duty to know who comes into our country. Without any kind of a structure, and without changing the laws, we have no way to know the identity of every person that walks across the unsecured border.

    So the ones we know about, we can give you 3,000. But I'm sure we can give you - we'll look to see what else we can give you unclass. Obviously, there's ongoing investigations that I can't get into.

    THE PRESIDENT: So I think that we can say with surety, I think it was a great meeting. We'll see what happens. It may get solved. It may not get solved. You now know the number. You now know what we're willing to do. And if we have to do it, we'll do it.

    And again, we're going to be, I believe, very productive over the weekend. We have a very talented group. They have a very talented group of people, so I understand. And I think some tremendous things will happen. And I really believe the biggest beneficiaries of what we're doing are children, are women, are workers. And a lot of these people that really do benefit are not only the people in our country, but the people that travel up trying to get into a country that they think they're going to get into and they can't. And they get sick, and there's tremendous damage done to them and their families. These are all tremendous beneficiaries of what we're doing.

    So this really does have a higher purpose than next week's pay. And the people that won't get next week's pay, or the following week's pay, I think if you ever really looked at those people, I think they'd say, "Mr. President, keep going. This is far more important."

    I want to thank you all. And we'll see you soon. They'll be working very hard over the weekend. Thank you very much. Thank you.

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