President Donald Trump claimed credit this week for efforts by Mexican authorities to break up the caravan, which he said they did at his demand. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Trump credits Mexico for reportedly breaking up migrant caravan

President Donald Trump on Thursday celebrated the move by Mexican authorities this week to break up a large group of migrants making their way north toward the U.S., claiming credit for a reduction in illegal border crossings while insisting that such crossings remain too frequent.

“The Caravan is largely broken up thanks to the strong immigration laws of Mexico and their willingness to use them so as not to cause a giant scene at our Border,” the president wrote online. “Because of the Trump Administrations actions, Border crossings are at a still UNACCEPTABLE 46 year low. Stop drugs!”


Border security has been an intense focus of the president this week, beginning last Sunday when he posted a series of tweets on the subject. Trump also announced earlier this week that he would deploy U.S. troops along the Mexican border, a step that both of his immediate predecessors took at different points in their tenures as well, until his promised border wall is completed.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, in an interview Thursday with Fox News' "Fox & Friends," said she had been in contact with the governors of border states to discuss the prospect of deploying national guard units along the border and would speak to the governors again Thursday. She declined to get into specifics of her conversation with California Gov. Jerry Brown, the only Democratic governor of a state that shares a border with Mexico, but said Brown had been supportive of such a deployment in the past.

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Nielsen said national guard troops along the border would play a supporting role for Border Patrol agents, engaging in air support and providing fleet maintenance as well as medical care for individuals interdicted by the Border Patrol. More helpful, Nielsen said, would be moves from Congress to pass tougher border security measures.

"We have everything on the table, I can assure you. We're looking at every way we can act within the executive branch but I really will continue to ask Congress to please work with me in the next couple months to pass legislation," she said, echoing multiple calls from the president in recent days for legislative action. "I never talk to a senator or congressman who doesn't tell me that they're in favor of border security. Let's put forward a legislative proposal that can pass."

Much of the president’s preoccupation with border security this week seems to have been prompted by the caravan of immigrants, mostly from Honduras, that had been making its way north through Mexico, past immigration checkpoints and other government installations. The president claimed credit this week for efforts by Mexican authorities to break up the caravan, which Trump said they did at his demand.

The U.S.-based organizer of the caravan said this week that its march would end in Mexico City, not at the U.S. border as had been planned, according to a Reuters report. Some migrants who had been part of that caravan said they would continue toward the U.S., even after their group disbands.

