Washington: United States President Donald Trump might impose a national emergency in the country if talks between him and his Senate officials remains stalled over the border wall funding issue in the House, a White House official confirmed.
CNN quoted the White House official as saying that the imposition of national emergency can “provide a way out” to resume talks between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials and the House Democrats following the riff over the construction of a wall on the US’ border with Mexico despite a partial government shutdown over funding for the proposal.
“We can only stay like this for so long,” the White House official said.
Meanwhile, not much headway was made during the meeting with US administration officials and congressional staff, as the government shutdown entered the 15th day on Saturday (local time).
The stalemate between the White House and lawmakers was triggered over Trump’s demand for billions of dollars to fund his proposed US-Mexico border wall.
While addressing a conference on Friday, the US President stated, “We can call a national emergency because of the security of our country.”
“I haven’t done it. I may do it. We can call a national emergency and build it very quickly,” Trump added.
However, DHS Press Secretary Tyler Houlton told CNN that the stalemate in the US government is overshadowing the humanitarian crisis at US’ southern border with Mexico.
“We put the facts and statistics out there publicly and transparently to inform the conversation about the humanitarian crisis at our southern border. It is a shame that some congressional staff want to ignore the facts and ignore this crisis. As always, we stand by to explain these difficult problems to those seeking to better understand the issues and find solutions,” Houlton said.
The US President also outlined the alleged criminal activity which is taking place across the US-Mexico border due to the current lack of a continuous wall on Instagram on January 5 (local time).
The dissonance between the lawmakers and the US President led to a partial government shutdown, which marked its 15th day on Saturday (local time). Several government agencies in the US are currently shut due to the impasse.
However, the US House on January 3 had passed legislative packages to reopen the government, including a stopgap spending bill to restart activities at the Department of Homeland Security, without allocating any funds for the wall.
[source_without_link]ANI[/source_without_link]