The White House has slammed Donald Trump’s “disgusting” comments labelling 13,000 migrants who move to the United States as murderers.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said there are "a lot of bad genes" in the US on Monday while discussing murders allegedly committed by immigrants living illegally in the United States.
"How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers," Trump said in an interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt, while discussing the immigration policies of his Democratic opponent in the November 5 election, Vice President Kamala Harris.
"Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they're now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it's in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now."
The White House quickly condemned the former president’s remarks describing his language as “hateful”.
“It's disgusting, it's inappropriate and it has no place in our country," White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said.
Trump, himself a convicted felon, has frequently attacked migrants on the campaign trail, particularly those who have been implicated in crimes
He has used dehumanising language and he has increasingly turned to extremely graphic depictions of the crimes even though a range of studies show immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans.
Trump appeared to be referring to a letter from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Republican Representative Tony Gonzales, released last month, which showed that 13,099 people have been convicted of homicide who are on ICE's "non-detained docket."
That docket includes various types of immigrants who entered the country legally and illegally.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security called those statistics misleading.
"The data in this letter is being misinterpreted," the spokesperson wrote in an email.
"The data goes back decades; it includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more, the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this Administration. It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners."
In a statement, the Trump campaign defended his comments, saying he was speaking only about murderers, not immigrants.
"President Trump was clearly referring to murderers, not migrants," said Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt. "It's pretty disgusting the media is always so quick to defend murderers, rapists, and illegal criminals if it means writing a bad headline about President Trump."
