Donald Trump takes a detour from the battlegrounds Friday to visit a Colorado suburb that has been in the news over illegal immigration, spreading the message that migrants are causing chaos in smaller U.S. cities and towns, often using false or misleading claims to do this.
Trump’s rally in Aurora will be the first in the future the November elections that both presidential campaigns have visited Colorado, which reliably votes Democratic statewide.
The Republican candidate has long promised to organize the largest deportation operation in US history and has made immigration the core of his political persona since the day he launched his first campaign in 2015. In recent months, Trump has identified specific smaller communities that are experiencing a large influx of migrants, with local tensions flaring over resources and some longtime residents wary of sudden demographic changes.
Aurora came into the spotlight in August when a video circulated showing armed men walking through an apartment building where Venezuelan migrants lived. However, Trump has extensively claimed that Venezuelan gangs are taking over buildings authorities say this was a single block of the suburb, and the area is safe again.
Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have done just that spread lies about a community in Springfield, Ohio, where Haitian immigrants were accused of stealing and eating pets.
“It’s like an invasion from within, and we’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country, and we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora,” Trump said at a news conference in California last month.
Although Ohio and Colorado are not competitive in the presidential race, the Republican message on immigration is aimed at states that are. Vance recently campaigned in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, a city of 70,000 that has resettled refugees from Africa and Asia, and praised Trump’s plan to ramp up deportations. He argues that smaller communities have been “swamped” by immigrants who are taxing local resources.
Trump has vowed not to just deport “criminals,” a pledge he shares with the vice president Kamala Harrishis Democratic rival, but also Haitians live legally in Springfield and even people he has denigrated as “pro-Hamas radicals” protesting on college campuses. Trump has said he would revoke temporary protected status that allows Haitians to remain in the U.S. because of widespread poverty and violence in their home country.
Trump repeatedly blames Harris and President Joe Biden for allowing record arrivals, saying it is fueling violent crime, though the numbers show a continued downward trend after a crime spike in the era of the coronavirus pandemic.
During his campaign, Trump used specific cases of murders or attacks in which the suspects were immigrants who entered the country illegally. He has called them ‘animals’, and earlier this week suggested that suspects in murder cases “Have bad genes.”
Chris Haynes, an associate professor of political science at the University of New Haven who wrote a book on public opinion on immigration policy and has studied the former president’s messaging on immigration, says this is part of what he calls “episodic branding.” It will prompt some moderate voters to reassess who they want to support, he said.
“What has worked for him from the very beginning is vilifying immigrants, but also trying to make people feel like they are a threat,” Haynes said, saying some of the rhetoric also appeals to low-propensity voters that are part of his base. .
Just as Biden did before abandoning his re-election bid, Democrat Harris has turned right-wing on immigration and presented herself as a candidate who can be difficult when guarding the borderwhich is seen as one of its greatest vulnerabilities.
“What Kamala did to illegal immigrants is the biggest crime story of our time, because hundreds of thousands of people will be victims very soon,” Trump said in a recent speech in Erie, Pennsylvania, before saying he would send in federal law enforcement officers. “to liberate every town in Pennsylvania and every city in the United States of America that has been taken over by migrant gangs.”
Jeffrey Balogh, an Erie resident, said at that event that he strongly opposes Trump’s proposals on immigration. He said he recently felt uncomfortable when he went to rent seats at a company and five men speaking a foreign language were waiting outside for a bus.
“No one spoke any English,” he said. “You see a completely different environment.”
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Gomez reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.