Pence backs Trump’s claim that ‘Middle Easterners’ have infiltrated migrant caravan without evidence

Vice President Mike Pence doubled down Tuesday on the president’s assertion that “Middle Easterners” have infiltrated a caravan of Central American migrants traveling through Mexico to the U.S. border.

“It’s inconceivable that there are not people of Middle Eastern descent in a crowd of more than 7,000 people advancing toward our border,” Pence said in a conversation with the Washington Post Tuesday morning.

Pence backed up President Donald Trump’s statements that people from the Middle East, as well as MS-13 gang members, were mixed in with the thousands of migrants traveling to the nation’s southern border to escape violence and poverty in their countries. Trump made the comments in a tweet Monday and repeated them during a campaign rally in Houston later that night.

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During the conversation with The Post, Pence echoed claims made Monday by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders that 10 suspected terrorists a day are apprehended at the southern border, a statistic that has been debunked by members of their own administration.

In June, Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of Homeland Security, said during at The International Homeland Security Forum in Israel said 10 suspected terrorists a day were blocked in foreign countries from boarding flights to the United States. Neilsen’s statement had no relation to enforcement on the southern border.

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“In fact, on average, my department now blocks 10 known or suspected terrorists a day from traveling to or attempting to enter the United States,” Nielsen said at the time.

The State Department released a report on worldwide terrorism last month that said, in part, that while the U.S. southern border is vulnerable, there is “no credible evidence” terrorists have established bases in Mexico or sent operatives through Mexico into the United States.

ABC News

Yet Pence told The Post: “In the last fiscal year, we apprehended more than 10 terrorists or suspected terrorists per day at our southern border from countries that are referred to countries in the lexicon as other than Mexico. That means from the Middle East region.”

In recent days, Trump has attempted to make migrant caravan an issue in the midterm campaign by blaming Democrats for not cooperating on immigration reform.

The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, dismissed Trump’s claim as a diversion from other issues, particularly health care, ahead of the midterm elections.

Efforts to reach a compromise in Congress on immigration reform stalled in June after Trump refused to back a bill that didn’t include radical reductions to the current legal immigration system.

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Thousands of migrants entered Mexico on Friday after they stormed through a fence on the Mexico-Guatemala on Friday in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, and pushed by border agents.

Since then the number of Central American migrants headed north has grown to more than 7,000 as more have streamed into Mexico, a United Nations spokesman said.

An ABC News crew embedded with the caravan has seen no evidence of Middle Eastern people joining the group. Many members of the caravan are women and children mostly from Honduras and Guatemala, who have told ABC News they were fleeing gang violence and poverty in their respective countries and that their goal is to make it to the United States.

On Tuesday, the caravan was in Huixtla, Mexico, more than 1,000 miles from the closets U.S. border crossing at McAllen, Texas.

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The group awoke in Huixtla on Tuesday morning after many of them walked about 50 miles over two days in near 90-degree weather.

During the arduous journey, ABC News reporters witnessed several women and children passing out from apparent dehydration.

Mexican President Enrique Peña warned the migrants that their dream of reaching the United States will likely not be realized.

“I respectfully urge them to be aware that, if they maintain this attitude, they are unlikely to achieve their goal of either entering the United States or remaining in Mexico,” Peña said during a business forum on Monday.

He added that many of the migrants have “heeded the recommendation of the Mexican government to begin the refugee application process and be able to acquire orderly, legal migrant status.