Washington: Intensifying his pre-election anti-immigration push, President Trump has said he may send 15,000 troops to the US southern border to keep a slow-moving caravan of Latin American migrants from entering the country, but rejected allegation that he was fearmongering on the issue.
Trump has vowed not to let the caravan of people from three Latin American countries - El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras - enter the US.
"We have about 5,800 (troops deployed on the border). We'll go up anywhere between 10,000 and 15,000 military personnel, on top of Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and everybody else at the border," Trump told reporters at the White House.
"Nobody is coming in. We're not allowing people to come in," he said.
The caravan comprises about 3,500 people, remains nearly 1,000 miles away from US territory and is largely made up of families and children hoping to legally apply for asylum.
"If you look at what happened in Mexico two days ago, with the roughness of these people in the second caravan that's been forming, and also, frankly, in the first caravan, and now they have one forming in El Salvador -- and we are thinking very seriously immediately stopping aid to those countries," Trump said.
"I'm not fearmongering at all. Immigration is a very important subject, he said.
He accused the Democrats of letting immigration out of control in the US.
"We need Democrat votes to change the immigration laws. They haven't given us any votes. I actually think that they will," he said.
Describing the Caravan dangerous, which is still a thousand miles away, Trump said they will be getting to the US border very fast.
Trump is likely to continue harping on the immigration issue leading to Election Day on November 6, American media said.
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