President Donald Trump is using immigration reform to "promote himself in a campaign" and that comes off as "very racist" to Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.
"There should be comprehensive immigration reform and not immigration reform based on exciting and inciting those people who have negative thoughts about others coming across our border, and basically working to use that information to promote himself in a campaign," Waters told CNN's "New Day" host John Berman on Friday. "And I think some of that is very racist.
"It is not keeping with what this country is supposed to be all about. It is not what our Statue of Liberty portends."
Berman then asked Rep. Waters to specify what aspects of President Trump's merit-base immigration proposal is "racist" in her view.
"This business about you must speak English, or we're going to give you points for speaking English, and we don't want poor people – we only want those people who are earning substantial wages already," she responded. "All of those things are not keeping in step with the way that we treat human beings and even the fact – you know he used to talk about chain migration – when you were able to help others in the family come.
"He's going to limit that, and I think that some of those policies are racist."