Former President Donald Trump again made the headlines while discussing migrants and immigration to the U.S., this time saying he proposed to the head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) to have a spinoff league featuring migrants.
The presumptive GOP nominee made the comments during a speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority" conference in Washington. UFC head Dana White later confirmed that Trump had indeed said that to him, but clarified that they were "a joke."
"I said 'Dana, I have an idea. Why don't you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters, and then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants.' I think the migrant guy might win, that's how tough they are. He didn't like the idea too much," Trump said during the weekend.
In other passages of his speech before the evangelical group, Trump reiterated some of the claims he usually makes regarding undocumented migrants trying to reach the country's southern border, such as them coming from "prisons and mental institutions." He then warned that "they're going to start hitting us very hard," and again promised to "begin the largest deportation operation in American history" if elected in the November elections.
At another speech at Temple University in Philadelphia, Trump also delved on the issue by talking about the killing of Rachel Morin in Maryland last year. He made reference to the fact that the main suspect in the case is a Salvadorian man who had been deported at least three times before allegedly committing the crime, calling him an "animal."
The Washington Post recalled that most people arrested at the southern border don't have criminal convictions, according to federal data, and different studies throughout the years have shown that an increased presence of documented or undocumented migrants does not lead to more crime in the country.
However, this rhetoric by Trump has become a staple of his public addresses. Last week he told a group of prospective voters that undocumented immigrants are stealing jobs and government resources that could be going to them.
Trump made the claims in Detroit before two contrasting groups: Black voters and hardcore conservatives who have had white supremacists among them.
"The people coming across the border — all those millions of people — they're inflicting tremendous harm to our Black population and to our Hispanic population," said Trump during a passage of his speech. "They're invading your jobs," he added.
Earlier this month, he made his way to Las Vegas where he called Nevada, which boasts a large Latino population, a "dumping ground" for unauthorized immigrants and slammed President Joe Biden for unleashing a "nightmare" through his border policies that he argued were "totally destroying" Black and Hispanic Americans."
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