DALLAS: US President Barack Obama on Wednesday warned parents in Central America not to send their children alone on the perilous journey through Mexico to illegally cross the US border.
Obama also urged Congress to stop playing politics and work with him to pass his request for $3.7 billion in emergency funding to deal with the building immigration crisis.
"Parents need to know this is an incredibly dangerous situation and it is unlikely that their children will be able to stay," Obama said, referring to a flow of 57,000 unaccompanied minors from Central America who have crossed the southwestern US frontier since October in the search for a better life. Often they are smuggled across.
"I've asked parents across Central America not to put their children in harm's way in this fashion."
Obama was speaking in Dallas, after meeting Texas's Republican Governor Rick Perry, local officials and faith leaders to discuss the border drama, which has developed into a toxic political showdown.
He demanded that lawmakers quickly pass the emergency funding bill to tighten border surveillance and enforcement and to rush customs and legal resources to the area to speed up deportations of illegal immigrants, and to consider asylum cases.
"Are folks more interested in politics, or are they more interested in solving the problem?" Obama asked.
"If the preference is for politics, then it won't be solved."
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