Donald Trump on Saturday escalated some of his harshest rhetoric against immigrants who cross the border illegally and commit crimes, particularly against young women, while he also escalated his personal insults against Kamala Harris.
In the battleground state of Wisconsin, Trump called Democratic Vice President Harris, who on Friday visited the US-Mexico border for the first time in her 2024 presidential campaign, “mentally weak” and “mentally handicapped.”
The Republican presidential candidate was surrounded by posters of immigrants living in the US illegally who have been arrested for murder and other violent crimes, and slogans such as “End immigrant crime” and “Deport illegals now.” Banners were put up.
His speech was unusually devoted almost entirely to undocumented immigrants. He called those who committed violent crimes “monsters,” “stone-cold murderers” and “vile animals.”
Trump is in a close race with Harris before the elections to be held on November 5. According to opinion polls, immigration and the southern border are among the top issues for voters.
The former president blamed Harris and Democratic President Joe Biden for allowing undocumented immigrants into the US, accusing some immigrants of wanting to “rape, rob, rob and murder the people of the United States.” Planted.
At one point Trump admitted: “This is a black speech”.
Trump’s speech was in the small town of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, where a Venezuelan national was illegally detained in the US in September on charges of sexually assaulting a woman and assaulting her daughter.
Nearly 7 million migrants have been arrested crossing the US-Mexico border illegally during Biden’s administration, according to government data, a record high number that has drawn criticism of Harris and Biden from Trump and fellow Republicans. Have promoted.
In her visit to the border on Friday, Harris outlined her plans to fix “our broken immigration system,” while accusing Trump of “fanning the flames of fear and division” over the impact of immigrants on American life. .
Harris also called for stricter asylum restrictions and vowed to make preventing fentanyl from entering the US a “top priority”.
Trump also repeated his false claim that his loss to Biden in the 2020 election was fraudulent. If re-elected, and “if allowed”, Trump said he would prosecute those he considers responsible for his defeat.
Studies generally show there is no evidence that immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans, and critics say Trump’s rhetoric reinforces racism.
Trump typically focuses on young women allegedly killed by Hispanic assailants to drive home that message, avoiding cases that involve male victims.
Trump’s opponents have accused him of exploiting bereaved families to fuel his narrative that foreign-born, often Hispanic, arrivals are part of an invasion force.
But some families of the victims have welcomed Trump’s attention to the issue of violent crime and teen deaths caused by the opioid drug fentanyl, much of which enters the US across the southern border.
Several parents who lost their children to attacks by immigrants in the US illegally or to fentanyl spoke in support of Trump ahead of his remarks on Saturday.