Donald Trump ups rhetoric on illegal immigration, calls migrants ‘animals’
- Trump repeated an unfounded claim at a campaign rally that Latin American nations are intentionally sending their criminals to the US
- He also described the presidential race as America’s ‘final battle’, saying ‘this country is finished if we don’t win this election’
Donald Trump called immigrants illegally in the United States “animals” and “not human” in a speech in Michigan on Tuesday, resorting to the degrading rhetoric he has employed time and again on the campaign trail.
The Republican presidential candidate, appearing with several law enforcement officers, described in detail several criminal cases involving suspects in the country illegally and warned that violence and chaos would consume America if he did not win the November 5 election.
In a later speech in Green Bay, Wisconsin, he struck a similarly foreboding tone, describing the 2024 election as the nation’s “final battle.”
While speaking of Laken Riley – a 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia allegedly murdered by a Venezuelan immigrant in the country illegally – Trump said some immigrants were subhuman.
“The Democrats say, ‘Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans.’ I said, ‘No, they’re not humans, they’re not humans, they’re animals,’” said Trump, president from 2017 to 2021.
In Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump described meeting the family of Ruby Garcia, a local 25-year-old murdered last month by a suspect in the country illegally, according to police. Garcia’s sister denied the former president spoke with the family, according to local media reports.
