Trump urges Starmer to use miltary to stop migrant boats
US President Donald Trump has urged Prime Minister Keir Starmer to deploy the military to stop the arrival of migrant boats and protect the country’s borders.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday (18 September), Trump said that the migrants were causing damage to the UK and that it should take the US’s stronger stance on migration..
“You have people coming in, and I told the Prime Minister I would stop it, and it doesn’t matter if you call out the military, it doesn’t matter what means you use.
“It destroys countries from within, and we’re actually now removing a lot of the people that came into our country,” he said.
Trump said that his stronger stance on migration had meant that no people had entered the country illegally in recent months.
“What I saw happening, with millions of people pouring into our country, I couldn’t stand to watch it, and we’ve done a great job,” he said.
“The last three months, we had zero – from millions of people a year ago, we had zero people enter our country illegally.”
In response, Starmer said that the UK was taking the issue of migration very seriously and already had strong plans in place, but that there was no ‘silver bullet’ to fix the issue.
“We struck the returns arrangement with France, and notwithstanding the challenges to that scheme, which you’ve seen in the last few days, a flight went off at 06h15 this morning, successfully returning someone under that scheme.
“So that is an important step forward. Obviously, there’s no silver bullet here. There’s a range of things that need to be done, but given the challenges of returning people, it is important we’re able to prove it can be done.”
