Former President Donald Trump on Thursday stoked fears about migrants coming into the United States as railed against President Joe Biden and his border policies as he stood feet from the US-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas.
Trump attempted to tie crime in the US to recent increases in immigration — what he calls it “migrant crime” — despite there being little evidence indicating a connection between immigration and crime. Many researchers actually argue immigrants are less likely to commit crimes.
The former president said he spoke on Wednesday to the parents of 22-year-old Laken Riley, who was found dead after jogging on the University of Georgia campus. Trump has repeatedly invoked Riley’s death as he pushes for his hardline immigration policies because her suspected killer is an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela.
“These are the people that are coming into our country, and they’re coming from jails and they’re coming from prisons and they’re coming from mental institution and they’re coming from insane asylums and they’re terrorists. They’re being led into our country. And it’s horrible,” Trump said as he repeated the typical anti-immigrant rhetoric he uses on the campaign trail.
The former president praised Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has tried to implement a new controversial security initiative. The US Supreme Court recently allowed US Border Patrol agents to remove razor wire deployed by Abbott’s initiative at the US-Mexico border while the state’s legal challenge to the practice plays out.
Trump’s trip to the border comes not long after Trump torpedoed a bipartisan border bill so he could continue campaigning on Biden’s perceived weakness on the border.
Source: www.cnn.com