Attorney General Jeff Sessions warned during a visit to the San Diego border area Monday that people who sneak into the country will be federally prosecuted, and if they bring children with them, those children will be taken away.
“If you cross the border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you — it’s that simple. If you smuggle illegal aliens across our border, we will prosecute you,” he said.
“If you are smuggling a child, we will prosecute you. And that child will be separated from you, as required by law,” he added as Mexican music played in the background.
But Sessions received a warning of his own from regular border activist William Johnson.
After feigning a need to use the restroom at Border Field State Park, a backpack-wearing Johnson emerged from the beach.
Border Patrol agents let him into the park restricted mainly to the media.
About 90 seconds after Sessions began his remarks, Johnson’s voice boomed through a bullhorn.
“Why are you here?” he yelled. “Are you separating families? Is that why you’re here? You’re not welcome here. … Do you have a soul? You are evil!”
Also: “What are you doing here? We don’t want you in our state. Why are you doing this? Do you have a heart? … Why do you work for this administration?”
A female Sessions staffer* led the East County man a distance away (KPBS caught the action on video). Later, he told Times of San Diego that he was with the Backbone Campaign.
In mid-December, Johnson accused the Sheriff’s Department of a slow response to his being assaulted at a Dec. 9 border rally in Otay Mesa.
Above the international media assembly Monday flew a large kite with a sign that said, in Spanish, “Parks not Walls.”
The visit by Sessions and Thomas D. Homan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was the latest in a series of appearances by Trump administration officials to tout a “zero-tolerance” stance against illegal immigration. Sessions’ vow to step up prosecutions follows an earlier administration move to increase the number of immigration judges and prosecutors along the border.
Other than a brief pause, Sessions largely ignored Johnson’s remarks and continued speaking.
Sessions noted that the Department of Justice will send 35 prosecutors and 18 immigration judges to the Southwest, a roughly 50 percent increase in the number of judges hearing asylum cases. He also said about 20 percent of asylum-seekers in recent years have been approved to stay in the United States
