Donald Trump suggests cutting foreign aid to stop illegal immigration

'These countries don't want the people that we’re getting,' president says

President Donald Trump speaks during a roundtable on immigration policy at Morrelly Homeland Security Centre (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump has said he is a working on a plan to dock foreign aid from countries whose citizens are caught crossing the US border illegally.

Mr Trump suggested that foreign countries were encouraging their citizens to immigrate illegally to the US, claiming these countries “don't want the people that we’re getting”.

"We're going to work out something where every time someone comes from a certain country, we're going to deduct a rather large amount of money from what we give them in aid,” Mr Trump said at an immigration roundtable on New York’s Long Island.

He added: “We may not just give them aid at all, because despite the reports I hear, I don't believe they're helping us one bit."

Wednesday’s roundtable with federal and local officials focused on MS-13, a violent street gang that started in Los Angeles in the 1980s. Mr Trump frequently cites MS-13 in his calls for stricter border control, as the majority of the gang members are of Central American origin.

Mr Trump drew criticism last week for referring to MS-13 members as “animals” during a White House immigration meeting. He doubled down on these comments on Wednesday, saying: "They’re not people. These are animals. And we have to be very, very tough.”

Mr Trump’s proposed 2019 budget suggests cutting billions of dollars from foreign aid spending. He proposed similar cuts last year, which Congress largely ignored when passing its own budget.

The president has suggested only providing foreign aid to “friends” of the US – a status determined largely by how they vote in the United Nations. Last December, he threatened to cut foreign aid to countries that voted in favour of a UN resolution calling on the US to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

“They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us,” he told reporters at the time. “Well, we’re watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care.”