Former President Trump on Thursday highlighted stories of individuals killed by migrants during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, seeking to go on offense against Vice President Harris on immigration in a critical battleground state.
Trump spoke in Cochise County with a backdrop of stacks of metal beams, intended to illustrate unfinished portions of a barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border that he made central to his first term in office.
The former president recounted graphic details of crimes in Michigan, New York, Georgia and Virginia that authorities said were committed by migrants who entered the country illegally, blaming the incidents on Harris and the Biden administration's border policies.
He invited the family members of Rachel Morin, who was killed in Maryland, and Jocelyn Nungaray, who was killed in Texas. Migrants who crossed the border illegally have been arrested in both cases.
“[Trump] needs to be in office, and we need better control and we need to stop this. We need to stop losing children, mothers, sisters, because now I get to grieve every single day,” said Alexis Nungaray, Jocelyn’s mother.
Trump has pledged to complete construction of the wall along the border, to push for tougher criminal sentences for drug traffickers and to enact the largest deportation operation in history if he is reelected. He has said deportation efforts would mostly rely on local law enforcement to round up those who enter the country illegally.
“She will never build the wall. She doesn’t want to build the wall,” Trump said of Harris. “If she changes her mind it's only because she wants to get elected, because who wouldn’t want to have a strong border.”
President Biden, upon taking office in January 2021, issued a proclamation directing a review of all resources appropriated or directed toward constructing a wall along the southern border and declaring “no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall.”
Biden in June announced new policies that make migrants who enter the country between ports of entry generally ineligible for asylum unless they meet certain exceptions, and a presidential proclamation that limits when border officials screen migrants for asylum claims.
Arizona is a border state, and immigration is likely to play a significant role in the outcome there in November. A Decision Desk HQ/The Hill average of polls from the state showed Trump and Harris deadlocked, reflective of how Harris has wiped out Trump's polling lead since entering the race a month ago.
The Trump campaign has aggressively attacked Harris on immigration, branding her the “border czar,” a reference to her work on addressing root causes of migration from Central American countries. Republicans have cited record numbers of apprehensions at the southern border and highlighted crimes committed by those who entered the country illegally to go after Democrats.
Harris and her campaign have attempted to blunt those attacks by blaming Trump for tanking a bipartisan border security proposal put forward earlier this year in the Senate that would have increased resources for law enforcement and cracked down on the number of individuals who could cross each day.
Democrats have also criticized Trump for his rhetoric on immigration, blasting the former president for saying immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country.
The former president, as he has during each of his campaign stops this week, at times struggled to focus on the intended policy purpose of his speech.
He questioned FBI statistics that showed violent crime decreasing. He claimed Biden’s decision to end his campaign amounted to a “coup.” And he repeated a false claim that an anticipated revision of jobs numbers released this week amounted to a conspiracy.
