Aurora, Colorado.- Donald Trump momentarily suspended his tour of the most contested states yesterday to visit a Colorado suburb that has been in the news for illegal immigration, where he promoted a message that migrants are causing chaos in small cities and towns in the United States.
Trump’s rally in Aurora marked the first time before the November elections that one of the presidential campaigns visited Colorado, a state that typically votes Democratic.
The Republican candidate has long promised to implement the largest deportation operation in the history of the United States, and has made immigration a central theme of his political message since the day he launched his first campaign in 2015. In recent years For months, Trump has singled out specific small communities where large numbers of immigrants have arrived, a phenomenon that has sparked local tensions over resource use, and some long-time residents have expressed distrust of the sudden changes. demographics.
Aurora gained attention in August when a video circulated showing armed men walking through an apartment building where Venezuelan migrants live. Trump has widely claimed that Venezuelan gangs are taking over buildings, even though authorities say that happened only on one block of the Denver suburb, and that the area is safe again.
Still, Trump painted a picture of apartment complexes taken over by “savage thugs” and streets unsafe to navigate, blaming President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic rival.
“They…” Trump said, referring to Democrats in the White House, “are ruining their state.”
“No person who has inflicted the violence and terror that Kamala Harris has inflicted on this community can ever be allowed to become president of the United States,” the former president added.
Trump frequently used dehumanizing language, calling his political rivals “scum” and calling immigrants “animals” who have “invaded and conquered” Aurora. The town is “infected by Venezuela,” he asserted.
“We have to clean up our country,” Trump said. And he returned to the first controversy of his career in politics, when he launched his 2016 campaign with the claim that immigrants are rapists who bring drugs and crime.
“I got a lot of criticism for saying it, but I was right,” the Republican candidate said, repeating the false claim that other countries are emptying their prisons and psychiatric hospitals and sending their worst criminals to the United States.
He called for the death penalty “for any migrant who kills an American citizen or a police officer,” which was received with thunderous applause.
Trump announced that, if elected president, he would launch “Operation Aurora” to deport members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. This gang emerged more than a decade ago in a prison notorious for its anarchy.
The former president also repeated his promise to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows the president to deport any noncitizen who is from a country with which the United States is at war.
In July, the Biden administration issued a sanction against the gang and offered a $12 million reward for the arrest of three of its leaders.
Jodie Powell, a 54-year-old Republican Aurora resident, rejected Trump’s claims that Venezuelan gangs have taken over the city.
“It’s not like that,” said Powell, wearing a white cap with the slogan “Make America Great Again.” Still, she added, she has seen an increase in crime that she links to the newcomers, and mentioned a police chase that ended at a store where she was shopping.
“It takes a small number of people to make a big difference in the community,” said Powell, for whom immigration is his main concern, along with the economy. “It’s scary, it’s kind of scary.”
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