In a meeting in the Oval Office Thursday, President Donald Trump referred to immigrants coming from Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries as coming from “s***hole countries,” according to our media partner The Washington Post.
Trump was frustrated with lawmakers when they discussed restoring some protections for immigrants from those countries, according to The Post. Trump then suggested that the U.S. should instead bring people from countries like Norway.
“Why are we having all these people from s***hole countries come here?” Trump said, according to sources who spoke to The Post.
The White House is not denying that President Donald Trump used profanity in referring to African nations during a meeting on immigration.
Spokesman Raj Shah says in a statement that while "Certain Washington politicians choose to fight for foreign countries," Trump "will always fight for the American people."
He says Trump wants to welcome immigrants who "contribute to our society, grow our economy and assimilate into our great nation," and will always reject "temporary, weak and dangerous stopgap measures" that he says "threaten the lives of hardworking Americans" and undercut other immigrants.
The DC attorney general Karl A. Racine reacted on Twitter, writing that he is "proud to be Haitian-American, and I will continue to fight for the dignity and safety of every member of the District’s immigrant communities."
Several civil rights organizations quickly responding, including the NAACP, which accused Trump of "lowbrow, callous and unfiltered racism."
A statement released Thursday evening by the organization says Trump's "decision to use profanity to describe African, Central American and Caribbean countries is not only a low mark for this president, it is a low point for our nation."
The American Civil Liberties Union said Trump "has been consistently honest about the white nationalism behind his immigration policies."
Lorella Praeli, the ACLU's director of immigration policy, said Trump's comments were "directly contrary to the decision Congress made in 1965 to do away with the racist per-country quotas of the past."
Some reporting was taken from the Associated Press.
