Former President and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump again criticized immigrants during a political event, telling a group of prospective voters that they 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.
Later, in reference to violent immigrant gangs, he said members "are not human beings." "They're animals," he added.
Michigan is one of the few battleground states left in the country. Biden won it by less than three percentage points in 2020 and Trump is vying to flip it in November. According to The Associated Press, Trump's crowd was "smaller but also warmly receptive."
Trump has made many similar statements throughout his campaign, with immigration enforcement at the center of his campaign. What is new is his audience, as he has made such claims before demographics that perhaps were not as sympathetic to such messages in the past.
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."
However, recent polls show that Trump's support among the state's working-class and Latino voters is increasing. His campaign is trying to capitalize on dissatisfaction among those groups with Biden's handling of the economy.
The former President continued broadly depicting migrants crossing the border illegally as violent criminals or mentally ill people, and then recited "The Snake," a standby poem he has used since 2016 to expound on the threat that he believes undocumented immigrants pose to the country, The New York Times reported.
This is no new imagery from Trump. Throughout the campaign trail, he has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that foreign countries all over the world are emptying their prisons and mental institutions in a deliberate effort to offload people into the United States. He has also said migrants are fueling a crime wave and hail from "the dungeons of the Third World."
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