US President Donald Trump has said the UK must follow America’s hard line on immigration or ‘you’re not going to have a country left’.
He praised his own immigration policies, claiming he had reduced people entering the US illegally to ‘zero’, adding the UK must ‘take [migrants] back immediately’.
Speaking to GB News, he called for the government to deploy the military to tackle the small boats problem in a rambling interview that also saw him threaten again to sue the BBC for up to $5 billion.
It comes after the BBC sent a personal apology to the US President on Thursday after it was revealed it had edited two parts of a speech he made on the day of the Capitol riot in 2021.
The clip, which appeared in a Panorama documentary that has since been removed from iPlayer, did mislead viewers, the corporation has admitted, but bosses have strongly denied that there is any defamation case to answer.
Speaking last night, Trump turned his attention to the immigration debate in the UK and said: ‘When you have people coming into your country and they’re bad people the wrong people it doesn’t work and it’s not working.
‘If you don’t get them out you’re not going to have a county left.’
Adding that immigration is ‘more important than inflation’ he said: ‘You have to take them [illegal migrants] out you have to take them back immediately.
US President Donald Trump has said the UK must follow America’s hard line on immigration or ‘you’re not going to have a country left’ in an interview with GB News yesterday
Speaking to GB News, he called for the UK government to deploy the military to tackle the small boats problem, just as he has used them at the Mexican border (pictured)
‘Don’t forget two years ago, a year-and-a-half ago we were having millions of people pour through our borders. You know what we have now for the last six months? Zero.’
Although illegal migration has fallen sharply under the tough measures brought in by Donald Trump, data contradicts the claim that it is now non-existent.
Trump credited the military for the drop in illegal migration, and told GB News the UK should act in an ‘identical’ way.
‘We were very tough at the border, we would take people immediately back and I had the military as a backup,’ he said.
‘We don’t play games with our military.’
Trump added of the UK: ‘You have an advantage because actually you have so much sea. Because sea is sort of a protector, now sometimes they come in by boat but it’s a protection.’
The President has taken a hard line on immigration, deploying ICE agents and the national guard in Democrat-run cities across the nation to seize so-called illegals from the streets.
As of last month, around 493,000 migrants had been deported since Trump took office in January, while another 1.6 million have self-deported.
US soldiers are deployed at the Mexican border in May amid Trump’s crackdown on immigration
A group of people attempt to cross the English Channel on a small boat to enter the UK
On the first day of his presidency the Republican leader declared a national emergency on the border with Mexico and the military has been deployed there in efforts to seal it against all people seeking to cross it illegally.
Elsewhere, the country has seen prominent ICE raids leading to widespread protests in cities such as Chicago, which has seen Trump deploy members of the National Guard to subdue them.
He brought in a raft of new measures in his ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ in July, stripping many legal immigrants of access to health insurance and other benefits.
In recent days he has banned immigrants from claiming asylum on US soil and capped the overall annual number of refugees at 7,500.
His calls for the UK to follow a similar line are unlikely to be heeded by Labour, but the Prime Minister and Home Secretary have promised to introduce harsher measures.
It is expected that Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will set out sweeping plans in the coming days to make the UK’s immigration system more in line with the tougher Danish system, and unveil anti-migration measures.
She is also understood to be preparing new human rights legislation that will make it easier to deport people who have crossed the Channel on small boats.
As of Thursday some 39,075 people had crossed the Channel in this way so far this year.
Trump also hit out at Europe, saying it is ‘not the same place’ amid mass migration.
‘I’m saddened to see what happened in Europe with the immigration. I think above all else, the immigration, but the bad taxing policies,’ he said.
‘When you look at, you know, Europe is not the same place. I can’t say every place, but pretty much almost every place. There are a couple of places.’
Trump’s latest comments came in an interview in which he doubled down on plans to sue the BBC over the editing of two parts of his speech on January 6, 2021.
‘I’m not looking to get into lawsuits, but I think I have an obligation to do it. This was so egregious’, he told GB News’ Bev Turner.
‘If you don’t do it, you don’t stop it from happening again with other people’.
On Friday he told reporters outside the White House that he would formally seek damages anywhere in the region from $1 billion to $5 billion.
He previously vowed to sue unless he got a full retraction, grovelling apology and offer of compensation for misleading Panorama viewers with an edit of his speech by next Friday.
The BBC apologised but said it refused to pay financial compensation.
The corporation said the splicing of the speech was an ‘error of judgment’ but rejected his compensation demands.
Chairman Samir Shah has sent a personal letter to the White House to apologise for the editing, and lawyers for the corporation have written to the president’s legal team, a BBC spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added: ‘While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim.’
The edit ultimately led to the resignations of Director General Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, the head of BBC News, last Sunday.
