Last Updated: December 17, 2023, 12:09 IST
Donald Trump, former US president and Republican presidential candidate, looks on at the Club 47 USA event in West Palm Beach, Florida, US. (Image: Reuters)
Trump sparks controversy with comments on undocumented immigrants, accusing them of ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ during a New Hampshire campaign event
Donald Trump, the Republican presidential frontrunner, said on Saturday that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” repeating language that earlier drew criticism.
Trump made the comments during a campaign event in New Hampshire where he railed against migrant crossings at the US-Mexico border, which hit new highs in September. The former US president has promised to crack down on illegal immigration and restrict legal immigration if elected to a second four-year term in office.
“They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump told a rally in the city of Durham, adding that immigrants were coming to the U.S. from Asia and Africa in addition to South America. “All over the world they’re pouring into our country.” Trump used the same “poisoning the blood” language during an interview with The National Pulse, a right-leaning website, that was published in late September.
He is the leading candidate for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination and has made border security a major theme of his campaign. He is vowing to restore the hardline policies from his 2017-2021 presidency, and implement new ones that clamp down further on immigration.
US President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, has sought to enact more humane and orderly immigration policies but has struggled with record levels of migrants, a problem seen as a vulnerability for his re-election campaign.
On the campaign trail, Trump has used inflammatory language to describe the border issue and slam Biden’s policies. On Saturday he recited the lyrics of a song he has repurposed to liken immigrants to deadly snakes. If re-elected, Trump promised “to stop the invasion of our southern border and begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
(With Reuters inputs)
