Donald Trump says he'd be able to reject Syrian children fleeing to the United States as refugees, and be able to "look in their faces and say you can't come here."
At a campaign event in Salem, N.H., on the eve of the first-in-the nation primary, the GOP presidential front-runner – who has called for a
temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States over vetting concerns – was told about a group of Syrian children expected to relocate and attend school in Connecticut, and then asked if he could personally reject them.
The reply was blunt – and applauded.
"I can look in their faces and say 'you can't come here,'" Trump replied to the question, triggering applause.
"We don't know where their parents come from, they have no documentation whatsoever," Trump said. "I've talked to the greatest legal people, spoken to the greatest security people. There's absolutely no way of saying where these people come from. They may be from Syria, they may be ISIS, they may be ISIS related."
He called for Gulf States in the Middle East to take more initiative on resettling refugees, even with some American monetary support – and questioned how migrants – which he said were mostly young men and few women and children – were able to bring cell phones with them.
"You see them on cell phones, where do they get their cell phones? This is a migration, they have no anything, but they have cell phones, with ISIS flags on them and worse," Trump declared, asking who pays the bills for the cell use.
The exchange with the Connecticut man was tweeted out by a reporter from the Washington Post.
Trump has been warning since last fall that the Obama administration's plan to bring Syrian refugees could result in "one of the greatest military coups of all time,"claiming that ISIS fighters could be among the refugees and the migration would be like a
"Trojan horse."
"I'm putting the people on notice that are coming here from Syria… If I win, they're going back," he told one crowd, also in New Hampshire,
Mediaite reported at the time.
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