Trump
intensifies nativist message with sweeping proposal to deport immigrants
Republican
nominee holds rally in Aurora, Colorado, and exploits swirl of local rumors to
push anti-immigrant plan
David Smith
in Washington
Fri 11 Oct
2024 18.58 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/11/trump-aurora-colorado-migrant-crackdown
Donald Trump
intensified his politics of nativism and xenophobia on Friday by announcing a
sweeping plan to deport Venezuelans he claimed have “infected” a once-peaceful
city in Colorado.
The
Republican presidential nominee held a campaign rally in Aurora on a stage
adorned with posters displaying mugshots of people in prison-orange uniforms
with descriptions including “illegal immigrant gang members from Venezuela”.
Trump told
the crowd: “I’m announcing today that, upon taking office, we will have an
‘Operation Aurora’ at the federal level to expedite the removals of these
savage gangs.” He pledged to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that
allows the president to deport any non-citizen from a country that the US is at
war with.
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“We will
send elite squads of Ice [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], border patrol
and federal law enforcement officers to hunt down, arrest and deport every last
illegal alien gang member until there is not a single one left in this
country,” he continued as the crowd roared approval.
If they
return to the US, Trump said, they will serve an automatic 10 years in prison
without parole. “I’m hereby calling for the death penalty for any migrant that
kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer. With your vote, we will
achieve complete and total victory over these sadistic monsters. It’s going to
go very quickly,” he said.
The rally
represented a detour for Trump, since Colorado is not a battleground state and
looks certain to vote for his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris. But recent
events offered him an opportunity to exploit a swirl of local rumours to push
his anti-immigrant message.
Aurora, a
city of about 340,000 people near Denver, hit headlines in August when a video
circulated showing armed men walking through an apartment building housing
Venezuelan immigrants. Trump amplified the story and falsely portrayed the city
as overrun by members of the Venezeulan gang Tren de Aragua, or TDA.
Authorities
say the incident happened in a single block and the area is again safe, noting
that the local crime rate is actually declining. Aurora’s Republican mayor,
Mike Coffman, called Trump’s claims “grossly exaggerated” and insisted: “The
narrative is not accurate by any stretch of the imagination.”
TDA traces
its origins back more than a decade to a notorious prison. In July, the Biden
administration issued a sanction against the gang, placing it alongside MS-13
from El Salvador and the mafia-styled Camorra from Italy on a list of
transnational criminal organisations, and offering $12m in rewards for the
arrests of three leaders.
At Friday’s
rally, Trump played a series of news clips, accompanied by dramatic music,
describing TDA’s crimes and the murder of US citizens by undocumented
immigrants, as well as some seemingly evasive answers by Harris, the
vice-president, whom Trump branded a “criminal” and the “worst border tsar” in
the country’s history.
“My message
today is very simple,” he said. “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 promised that 5 November, when the election is held, will be
“liberation day”, prompting chants of “USA! USA!” from the crowd.
“I will
rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered. These towns
have been conquered and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in
jail or kick them out of our country and we will be very, very effective in
doing it. It’s going to happen very, very fast. Gonna get them the hell out of
our country,” he said.
Trump added
later: “We’re talking a lot about Venezuela, because Aurora is really infected
by Venezuela, but they’re coming from all countries.”
The remark
recalled past dehumanising language in which Trump claimed undocumented
immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” and, earlier this week,
suggested that those suspected in homicide cases “have bad genes”.
Trump
supporters wave placards
View image
in fullscreen
Trump
supporters at the rally in Aurora on Friday. Photograph: David Zalubowski/AP
In similar
fashion on Friday, Stephen Miller, a former top aide who is expected to take a
senior role in the White House if Trump wins, pointed to the posters on stage
as he addressed the crowd before Trump’s appearance.
“Look at all
these photos around me,” Miller said. “Are these the kids you grew up with? Are
these the neighbors you were raised with? Are these the neighbors that you want
in your city?” The crowd roared “no” in reply.
The
ex-president has long made immigration his signature issue and promised to
stage the biggest deportation operation in US history if he returns to the
White House. In recent months, he has targeted specific smaller communities
that have seen significant arrivals of immigrants, with tensions flaring
locally over resources and some longtime residents expressing misgivings about
sudden demographic changes.
More than
40,000 immigrants have arrived in the Denver metro area over the past two
years, including many Venezuelan families fleeing poverty and violence. But
Colorado’s Democratic leaders accuse Trump and other Republicans of overstating
problems in Aurora.
Representative
Jason Crow told the Associated Press: “What is occurring is minimal and
isolated. And to be clear, it’s never acceptable, right? We never say any level
is acceptable. But it’s not a surge. It’s not a change. There is no takeover of
any part of this city, of any apartment complex. It has not happened. It is a
lie.”
Trump and
his running mate, JD Vance, also have spread falsehoods about a community in
Springfield, Ohio, where they said Haitian immigrants had been stealing and
eating pets. The disinformation campaign led to bomb threats, school closures
and forced evacuations.
Trump has
said he would revoke the temporary protected status that allows Haitians to
stay in the US because of widespread poverty and violence in their home nation.
Democrats
have condemned Trump for tanking a border security bill negotiated in the
Senate by both parties because it could have neutralised immigration as an
issue. Harris told a Univision town hall in Nevada on Thursday: “He would
prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”
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