Trump on immigrants: ‘We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now’

Former President Donald Trump used increasingly harsh rhetoric to attack immigrants, suggesting on Monday during an interview that immigrants commit horrendous crimes because “it’s in their genes.”

“How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers, many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States. You know now a murder, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now,” he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Trump also said Vice President Kamala Harris “wants to go into a Communist Party-type system” to “feed people governmentally.”

Trump’s suggestion that immigrants are predisposed to violence is an escalation of his recent rhetoric against migrants, which he has used consistently on the campaign trail, assuring mass deportations if he wins the presidency. But Monday’s statement also reflects Trump’s previous anti-immigrant rhetoric, including comments last year that “they’re poisoning the blood of our country.” The White House condemned Trump’s statement for “echoing the grotesque rhetoric of fascists and violent white supremacists.”

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last week, he promised to remove Temporary Protected Status and deport the Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, after weeks of spreading baseless claims that the Haitian population there was eating pets with his running mate JD Vance. The national spotlight led to bomb threats at Springfield schools.

Harris said Trump’s rhetoric against the migrants “has to stop” in an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in September.

Immigration is an issue that resonates with voters, and it’s a vulnerability for Harris. In a September New York Times/Siena poll of registered voters across the country, Trump led Harris on the issue 53 percent to 42 percent. She recently made a campaign stop in Douglas, Arizona, to call for tougher border security.

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump, who has repeated the 13,000 figure before, pulled it from a letter from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales released last month. That letter showed that 13,099 non-citizens on ICE’s “non-detained docket” were convicted of homicide. However, that data only shows the individuals are not detained by ICE; they are more likely in state or federal prison. And the number of convicted criminals on that docket goes back decades.