text: Trump defends growing scandal of separating immigrant children from parents - by blaming 'illegal aliens' for killing Americans - Mirror Online
  Trump brings out American families who lost loved ones to illegal immigrants
  01:50, 23 Jun 2018
  Updated 05:25, 23 Jun 2018
  Donald Trump appeared with families of those killed at the hands of illegal aliens during a White House event on Friday - and blamed undocumented migrants for killing thousands of Americans since 2001.
  The President's joint press conference with so-called 'Angel' families was an attack on critics of his controversial separation policy at the US-Mexico border that has seen over 2,000 young children taken from their distraught parents.
  The 'Angel' families appeared to the press alongside photos of 11 loved ones who had been killed by criminals who had entered the US illegally.
  "We're gathered today to hear directly from the American victims of illegal immigration. You know you hear the other side, you never hear this side. You don't know what is going on," he said.
  Trump claimed that undocumented migrants killed 63,000 Americans since 2001 - a widely disputed figure (
  Trump alongside Angel familes (
  11 families shared their stories of loved ones killed by migrants (
  Trump also hit back at suggestions that the migrant population boasted a lower crime than home-born citizens - claiming it was "impossible" that the widely-reported data was correct.
  "I always hear that -- 'Oh no, the population is safer than the people that live in the country.' You've heard that, fellows, right? And I say is that possible? The answer is it is not true. You hear like they are better people than what we have, than our citizens, it is not true."
  Later Trump posted a picture of the event to Twitter and demanded that politicians "end the immigration crisis once and for all."
  Trump's migrant killing statistics have been widely disputed (
  Trump's claim would mean that a quarter of all homicides in the US were carried out by illegal migrants, the Washington Post says
  The figures were reportedly taken from a 2005 blog post by Republican congressman Steve King - later revealed to Trump by the mother of Sgt. Brandon Mendoza, killed in 2014 by a drunk driver.
  King later rowed back on these claims in a 2011 article - implying that the true number was probably closer to one per day.