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<\/p>\nThe paper published accounts of some administration officials who were present at a meeting about the administration\u2019s immigration policy in June.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump has pushed controversial immigration policies since becoming American president in January.<\/p>\n
Amongst his first policies was to ban visits from several countries \u2014 mostly from the middle east.<\/p>\n
The policy has been overturned and upheld by different American courts.<\/p>\n
The Times reported that Mr. Trump had a ready-made excuse for almost all the countries his controversial immigration policy targeted.<\/p>\n
He said he was banning people from Afghanistan because the country was a terrorist haven.<\/p>\n
When asked about why he was restricting people from Haiti, he described them as being infested with AIDS.<\/p>\n
On Nigerians, Mr. Trump said they would never \u201cgo back to their huts\u201d in Africa, the Times reported, citing two officials who were presented at the meeting held in Mr. Trump\u2019s office but who sought anonymity.<\/p>\n
Nigeria was eventually not included in the list of countries whose nationals were banned from entering America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
According to six officials who attended or were briefed about the meeting, Mr. Trump then began reading aloud from the document, which his domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller, had given him just before the meeting. The document listed how many immigrants had received visas to enter the United States in 2017.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
More than 2,500 were from Afghanistan, a terrorist haven, the president complained.<\/p>\n
Haiti had sent 15,000 people. They \u201call have AIDS,\u201d he grumbled, according to one person who attended the meeting and another person who was briefed about it by a different person who was there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
40,000 had come from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never \u201cgo back to their huts\u201d in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n
As the meeting continued, John F. Kelly, then the secretary of homeland security, and Rex W. Tillerson, the secretary of state, tried to interject, explaining that many were short-term travelers making one-time visits. But as the president continued, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Miller turned their ire on Mr. Tillerson, blaming him for the influx of foreigners and prompting the secretary of state to throw up his arms in frustration. If he was so bad at his job, maybe he should stop issuing visas altogether, Mr. Tillerson fired back.<\/p>\n
Tempers flared and Mr. Kelly asked that the room be cleared of staff members. But even after the door to the Oval Office was closed, aides could still hear the president berating his most senior advisers.<\/p>\n
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, denied on Saturday morning that Mr. Trump had made derogatory statements about immigrants during the meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cGeneral Kelly, General McMaster, Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Nielsen and all other senior staff actually in the meeting deny these outrageous claims,\u201d she said, referring to the current White House chief of staff, the national security adviser and the secretaries of state and homeland security. \u201cIt\u2019s both sad and telling The New York Times would print the lies of their anonymous \u2018sources\u2019 anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the White House did not deny the overall description of the meeting, officials strenuously insisted that Mr. Trump never used the words \u201cAIDS\u201d or \u201chuts\u201d to describe people from any country. Several participants in the meeting told Times reporters that they did not recall the president using those words and did not think he had, but the two officials who described the comments found them so noteworthy that they related them to others at the time.<\/p>\n
The meeting in June reflects Mr. Trump\u2019s visceral approach to an issue that defined his campaign and has indelibly shaped the first year of his presidency.<\/p>\n
Seizing on immigration as the cause of countless social and economic problems, Mr. Trump entered office with an agenda of symbolic but incompletely thought-out goals, the product not of rigorous policy debate but of emotionally charged personal interactions and an instinct for tapping into the nativist views of white working-class Americans.<\/p>\n
Like many of his initiatives, his effort to change American immigration policy has been executed through a disorderly and dysfunctional process that sought from the start to defy the bureaucracy charged with enforcing it, according to interviews with three dozen current and former administration officials, lawmakers and others close to the process, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail private interactions.<\/p>\n
But while Mr. Trump has been repeatedly frustrated by the limits of his power, his efforts to remake decades of immigration policy have gained increasing momentum as the White House became more disciplined and adept at either ignoring or undercutting the entrenched opposition of many parts of the government. The resulting changes have had far-reaching consequences, not only for the immigrants who have sought to make a new home in this country, but also for the United States\u2019 image in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have taken a giant steamliner barreling full speed,\u201d Mr. Miller said in a recent interview. \u201cSlowed it, stopped it, begun to turn it around and started sailing in the other direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is an assessment shared ruefully by Mr. Trump\u2019s harshest critics, who see a darker view of the past year. Frank Sharry, the executive director of America\u2019s Voice, a pro-immigration group, argues that the president\u2019s immigration agenda is motivated by racism.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s basically saying, \u2018You people of color coming to America seeking the American dream are a threat to the white people,\u2019\u201d said Mr. Sharry, an outspoken critic of the president. \u201cHe\u2019s come into office with an aggressive strategy of trying to reverse the demographic changes underway in America.\u201d<\/p>\n
New York Times<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trump said 40,000 Nigerians refuse to go back to their \u2018huts\u2019 in Africa after seeing America More than 2,500 were from Afghanistan, a terrorist haven, the president Trump complained. Haiti had sent 15,000 people to America. They \u201call have AIDS” \u00a0December 23, 2017: \u00a0United States\u2019 President Donald Trump described Nigerians as people living in huts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n