WASHINGTON:
Outgoing White House chief John Kelly said in an interview published Sunday
that he had "nothing but compassion" for undocumented migrants
crossing into the US, and undercut President Donald Trump's claims to be
building a "wall" at the Mexico border.

 As a partial government shutdown entered a
ninth day due to an impasse over Trump's demands for funding the US-Mexico
border barrier, the president's chief of staff told the Los Angeles Times:
"To be honest, it's not a wall."

"The
president still says 'wall.' Oftentimes frankly he'll say 'barrier' or
'fencing,' now he's tended toward steel slats," Kelly said. "But we
left a solid concrete wall early on in the administration, when we asked people
what they needed and where they needed it," he added. Building a solid
"wall" along the 2,000-mile US-Mexico frontier was a central plank of
Trump's 2016 election campaign, and he has tweeted about it almost 100 times
this year alone. "Either we build (finish) the Wall or we close the
Border," Trump -- who has adopted the 2020 re-election mantra
"promises made, promises kept" -- posted as recently as Friday.

A former Marine
general who led the military command responsible for Latin America, Kelly was
Trump's Homeland Security secretary before becoming White House chief of staff
in July last year. His relationship with the president reportedly deteriorated,
however, and he is to be replaced at the end of the year by Mick Mulvaney, the
current budget director. "Illegal immigrants, overwhelmingly, are not bad
people," Kelly told the LA Times, adding that many had been manipulated by
traffickers. "I have nothing but compassion for them, the young
kids."  The remarks were in sharp
contrast to the rhetoric of the president who regularly appeals to his
overwhelmingly white political base by taking a hard line on immigration.

'Pathetic
immigration policies'

Trump has spoken
of an "invasion" of migrants and complained of "many gang
members and some very bad people" among a thousands-strong caravan of
immigrants that traveled to the US in October. Migrants from Central America
say they want to reach the US to escape poverty and gang violence. Trump has
threatened to end aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, despite a State
Department announcement on December 18 that the US was ready to offer $4.5
billion in investment in Central America and southern Mexico, and that the
administration was requesting an additional $180 million in assistance to the
region.

On Saturday Trump
blamed opposition Democrats "and their pathetic immigration policies"
for the deaths of two Guatemalan children who crossed the border illegally with
relatives who were taken into custody by US Border Patrol. In a departure from
the stance taken by his boss, Kelly said the way to halt illegal immigration
was to "stop US demand for drugs, and expand economic opportunity" in
Central America. Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of US Customs and Border
Protection, said on ABC's "This Week" that investment in Central
America was one element of a "multi-faceted problem" that also
requires funding border security.

'Wasting taxpayer
dollars'

He called for a
"sober-minded non-partisan look at our immigration laws" as part of
the solution to an upsurge in family and child arrivals. "We've asked for
about 1,000 miles of wall... And what we're talking about is not just a dumb
barrier," McAleenan said. "We're talking about censors, cameras,
lighting, access roads for our agents, a system that helps us secure that area
of the border."

The Democrats are
refusing to provide billions for Trump's border wall project and the president
insists he will not fully fund the government unless he gets the money. As long
as the debate holds up approval of a wider spending bill, about 800,000 federal
employees are not getting salaries and non-essential parts of the government
are unable to function. Kellyanne Conway, a close Trump advisor, said on
"Fox News Sunday" that whether the border barrier was a
"wall" or not was "a silly semantic argument," adding that
the president had already compromised, since he had originally asked for $25
billion.

Mulvaney told Fox
last week that the administration had shown movement on the latest $5 billion
demand for border security. "We actually came off of our $5 billion
slightly," he said. Democratic Congressman Hakeem Jeffries agreed on ABC's
"This Week" that immigration reform and enhanced border security were
needed. "At its core, our responsibility in government is to manage public
money. We can either manage it efficiently or we can waste taxpayer
dollars," he said. "And what Donald Trump and the Republicans want to
do is waste $5 billion in taxpayer money on an ineffective medieval border wall
that is a fifth-century solution to a 21st century problem." - AFP