New Age | Trump says America is occupied by criminal aliens

Donald Trump painted an apocalyptic picture of a country “occupied” by hordes of criminal aliens in his campaign speech on Friday, as he stepped up efforts to draw attention to November’s US election on a wave of migrant crime that does not exist.

With the White House race neck-and-neck in its final stages, the Republican former president divided his final pitch between a protectionist economic message and angering his predominantly white, working-class supporters by demonizing immigrants.

As his Democratic primary rival Kamala Harris vowed to work with Republicans to promote a unity government, Trump delivered a speech as divisive as ever, greatly exaggerating local tensions and misleading his audience about immigration statistics and policy.

“America is known around the world as “Occupied America.” They call it “busy.” “We are being occupied by a criminal force,” Trump thundered during an 80-minute appearance in Aurora, Colorado, that focused almost entirely on immigration.

“But to everyone here in Colorado and across the country, I make this promise and vow: November 5, 2024 will be Liberation Day in America,” he added, flanked by posters of foreign suspected criminals.

As the U.S. government has struggled for years to manage its southern border with Mexico, Trump has heightened concerns by claiming an “invasion” of migrants is underway that he says will rape and murder Americans.

Racist lies

Aurora was the scene of a viral video showing armed Latinos rampaging through an apartment complex, leading to widespread false narratives about Latino migrants terrorizing the city.

The convicted felon called Harris a “criminal,” falsely claimed that Venezuelan gangs in Colorado had been given permission to shoot at police officers and spoke darkly of an “enemy from within” who he said posed a greater threat than anyone foreign opponents.

Trump promised to combat migrant gangs using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – which allows the federal government to round up and deport aliens from hostile countries – as part of a mass deportation operation he dubbed “Operation Aurora.”

Violent crime, which rose under Trump, has fallen in every year of President Joe Biden’s term.

Migrants commit relatively fewer crimes than the native population, although foreign suspects have been named in some high-profile cases of violent attacks on women and children, angering Republicans.

The number of encounters with illegal immigrants at the southern border is now about the same as in 2020, the final year of Trump’s presidency, after reaching a record 250,000 in December 2023.

The left-leaning lobbying group ProgressNow Colorado rejected “Trump’s racist lies about Aurora” in a statement, calling the rally “a major strategic mistake” for his campaign.

Back where they came from

Harris, campaigning in Scottsdale, Arizona, offered a stark contrast to Trump as she delivered a message of unity and promised to establish a “bipartisan council of advisers” in addition to a Republican in her Cabinet.

“In recent years, there have been some powerful forces in our country that are trying to divide us as Americans, that would cheer us on if we pointed fingers at each other,” she said, adding, “We have more in common than that “What separates us.”

With less than four weeks until the Nov. 5 election, polls suggest the race is too close to call. The latest Wall Street Journal poll on Friday showed Harris narrowly ahead in four of the seven swing states, but all key contests are within the margin of error.

Aurora police told AFP they had only isolated reports of Venezuelan street gang Tren de Aragua activity in the city, while Republican Mayor Mike Coffman called Trump’s claims “vastly exaggerated.”

Trump has similarly spread the fictional story that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating residents’ pets.

In Aurora, he repeated his threat to deport the community who are legally in Ohio, saying they “have to go back to where they came from.”

Trump continued on to Nevada for a second rally in the gambling hub of Reno, where he made many of the same misleading, inflammatory immigration claims despite leading on the economy, an issue on which his advantage over Harris was eroded.

Nevada – where Las Vegas is located – has a large service industry and Trump touted his “no tax on tips” policy to cheers.