Former US President Donald Trump has vowed mass deportations of illegal immigrants if he is re-elected later this year.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Nevada over the weekend, Trump said that the “extremist open-borders agenda” of his Democrat opponent, President Joe Biden, was “destroying innocent lives.”
“This is a rough group of people we’re letting in,” he said, referring to illegal immigrants crossing into the US via the country’s southern border.
“Many of them are very rough people. These are not babies. They come from prisons and jails, they come from mental institutions…they make our prisoners look like very nice people.”
Specifically Trump referred to a 40-year-old Nicaraguan man, who last month was sentenced to 19 years in prison for raping a developmentally disabled woman. The 44-year-old woman was hospitalised with head injures and multiple facial fractures as a result of the assault.
The assailant had been deported from the US a total of five times before this incident, and claimed that he felt like he was possessed by a demon as he carried out the attack.
Illegal immigrant raped Ohio woman, claimed he was ‘possessed by a demon’ https://t.co/4YamVg3VgX pic.twitter.com/bNHhJicQmA
— New York Post (@nypost) December 22, 2023
In court he pled guilty to the crimes of rape, felonius assault and kidnapping.
“Just weeks ago, a five-time deported illegal alien, who claims he was possessed by a demon, was sentenced for beating and raping a young woman with special needs, in what one law enforcement official described as among the most heinous crimes that she’d ever seen in her fifteen years in law enforcement,” Trump said.
“And just recently, a vicious illegal alien criminal, who was wanted for murder all over the planet, was discovered living as a fugitive right here in Las Vegas. Isn’t that nice?”
He also referred to an incident in Texas last month in which an illegal alien allegedly “brutally murdered” a 16-year-old Texas high school cheerleader, stabbing her 19 times and leaving her body in a bathtub.
‘Undocumented’ suspect arrested in murder of Texas high school cheerleader Lizbeth Medina https://t.co/8PYZuxKW8L pic.twitter.com/xvS5714ydL
— New York Post (@nypost) December 10, 2023
“He was let into our country illegally,” Trump said.
“We have no choice – within moments of my inauguration we will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
He added: “We have no choice because this is not sustainable.”
The statement comes amid an ongoing standoff between the southern State of Texas, which borders Mexico, and the US federal government on the issue of illegal immigration.
The State has seen record numbers of illegal border crossings in recent months, with over 300,000 migrants unlawfully entering Texas in December alone.
Republican Texas governor Greg Abbott, in an effort to stop the crossings, has put miles of razor wire across the Mexican border. However, last week the US Supreme Court ruled against the move.
Despite this, Abbott has vowed to add more razor wire, in defiance of the court, describing what is happening as an “invasion.”
A total of 25 other US governors have backed Abbott in this, releasing a joint statement claiming that Abbott is “stepping up to protect American citizens from historic levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and terrorists entering our country.”
However, the Supreme Court ruled by 5-4 that federal US Border Patrol agents had the right to cut the razor wire that was put in place by the Texas National Guard, with President Joe Biden’s Justice Department arguing that the fence poses a danger towards migrants and law enforcement officers. Allegedly, some illegal migrants have received cuts as they attempt to traverse the wire.