Donald Trump painted an apocalyptic picture of a country “occupied” by hordes of criminal aliens in a campaign speech on Friday (October 11), as he stepped up efforts to ensure that November’s US elections face a wave of migratory crime that is not happening.
With the race for the White House neck and neck in the home stretch, the former Republican president split his final argument between a protectionist economic message and the annoyance of his mostly white working-class supporters. by demonizing immigrants.
While his Democratic rival Kamala Harris pledged to work with Republicans to promote a united government, Trump delivered a speech as controversial as ever, vastly exaggerating local tensions and misleading his audience on immigration statistics and policy.
“America is known around the world as “Occupied America.” They call it “busy.” We are occupied by a criminal force,” Trump thundered, during an 80-minute appearance in Aurora, Colorado, devoted almost entirely to immigration.
“But to everyone here in Colorado and across our country, I make this commitment to you: November 5, 2024 will be Liberation Day in America,” he added, flanked by posters of suspected foreign criminals .
As the U.S. government has struggled for years to manage its southern border with Mexico, Trump has heightened concerns by saying an “invasion” is underway by migrants who he says will rape and murder Americans.
“Enemy within”
Aurora was the scene of a viral video, played repeatedly by right-wing media, showing armed Latinos rampaging through a building.
The incident gave rise to false narratives that the suburban Denver city was being terrorized by Latino migrants – fueling Trump’s election message that the United States is being invaded by what he calls ” wild” and “animals”.
Calling Harris a “criminal,” Trump falsely said Venezuelan gangs in Colorado had received authorization to shoot police, and spoke darkly of an “enemy within” that he defined as “all the scum we have to deal with who hate our country.”
If Harris stayed in office for four years, Trump said, “200 million people would come here…the country would be finished.”
Trump has pledged to combat migrant gangs using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – which allows the federal government to round up and deport aliens belonging to a country America is at war with – in the part of a massive expulsion campaign that he called “Operation Aurora”. “
Violent crime, which increased under Trump, has actually declined every year under the Biden administration.
Migrants commit proportionally fewer crimes than the native population, even though migrant suspects have been cited in a few high-profile cases of violent attacks on women and children, infuriating many Republican voters.
The number of illegal immigration at the southern border is now close to that of 2020, the final year of Trump’s presidency, after peaking at 250,000 migrant crossings in December 2023.
Harris, campaigning in Scottsdale, Arizona, offers a marked contrast to Trump by pushing a message of unity, pledging to institute a “bipartisan council of advisers” in addition to having a Republican in her cabinet.
“Back where they came from”
“In our country in recent years, there have been powerful forces trying to divide us as Americans and who would encourage us if we pointed fingers at each other,” she said, adding: “We have more in common than what separates us.
With less than four weeks until the November 5 election, polls show the race is too close to call. The last Wall Street Journal A Friday poll gave Harris a slim lead in four of seven swing states, but all key contests are within the margin of error.
Aurora police told AFP this week that they had only isolated reports of activity in the city by the Venezuelan street gang called Tren de Aragua.
And Republican Mayor Mike Coffman called Trump’s claims “grossly exaggerated,” offering to visit Aurora, which he called “a safe city — not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs.”
However, Trump clearly believes his fear-mongering remarks strike a chord. He also promoted the entirely fictitious story that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating residents’ cats and dogs. In Aurora, he reiterated his threat to evict the community, which is legally in Ohio, saying they “need to go back to where they came from.”
