President Donald Trump sparked anger among Democrats and some Republicans on Thursday by referring to Haiti and African nations as "shithole countries" while discussing the newly drafted immigration bill, according to two sources familiar with the comments.
The comments were first reported by The Washington Post and were later backed up The New York Times.
One of the sources who were briefed on the conversation said that Trump said, "Why do we want all these people from Africa here? They're shithole countries ... We should have more people from Norway."
The second source familiar with the conversation, said Trump, who has vowed to clamp down on illegal immigration, also questioned the need for Haitians in the United States.
Trump's remarks, made in the White House, came as Democratic Senator Dick Durbin and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham briefed the president on a newly drafted immigration bill being touted by a bipartisan group of senators, according to the sources, who asked not to be identified.
U.S. President Donald Trump listens during a meeting with bipartisan members of Congress on immigration in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018. / VCG Photo
Other government officials were present during the conversation, the sources said.
In an interview with Reuters, left-wing Haitian political activist, Rene Civil, responded to Trump's remark.
"In the name of the Haitian people, we as part of a 'patriotic emergency' that is fighting for real change in Haiti, we demand that Donald Trump apologize before the entire African continent as well as before Haiti, the country whose blood has been used by ancestors who have served with their minds and bodies to liberate the United States itself from slavery," Civil said.
Republican U.S. Representative Mia Love, a daughter of Haitian immigrants, said the comments were "unkind, divisive, elitist, and fly in the face of our nation's values" and called on Trump to apologize to the American people and to the countries he denigrated.
The program that was being discussed at the White House is called Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
In November, the Trump administration decided to end the status for immigrants from Haiti and Nicaragua.
It gave the approximately 59,000 Haitian immigrants who had been granted the status until July 2019 to return home or legalize their presence in the United States. Nicaraguans were given until January 2019.
This week, Trump moved to end the status for immigrants from El Salvador, which could result in 200,000 Salvadorans legally in the United States being deported beginning in September of next year.
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