Trump reiterates he wants legal immigrants, promises strong action against illegal migrants

Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump has reiterated that he wants immigrants as long as they come legally, but will take strong action against illegal migrants.

“We want to have people come into our country, but they have to come in legally”, he said on Friday at a campaign rally in Aurora, Colorado.

As for illegal immigrants, he said, “All across our nation I make this pledge and vow to you. November, 5, 2024, will be Liberation Day in America, (there) will be liberation” from what he said was “the occupation” of the country.

According to the Customs and Border Protection agency, till August as many as 82,610 Indian citizens were recorded crossing the borders illegally and 96,917 last year.

His opposition accuses him of being “anti-immigrant” – a refrain taken up by most of the mainstream media -- but Trump makes a distinction between illegal and legal immigrants while most Democrats lump those who waited for years and went through rigorous scrutiny to legally immigrate with those sneaking in.

He has promised Green Cards – legal immigrant status – for foreigners graduating from US colleges, going far beyond any Democrat proposals, which focus on legalising illegal immigrants.

"What I want to do and what I will do is, you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country”, he said in June.

That policy would be difficult to implement, but in theory it sounds as good news for the nearly 269,000 Indian students enrolled in US colleges and universities, according to statistics from the International Institute of Education covering 2022-23.

Colorado, where Trump campaigned on Friday, is a blue state that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016 and by President Joe Biden in 2020, and a poll taken last month by Keating Research gave Harris a lead of 11 per cent.

Trying to go against the odds, he made crimes by illegal immigrants the centrepiece of the speech in Aurora where reports that an armed Venezuelan criminal gang had taken over local apartment complexes have sparked fears.

Trump interrupted his speech to show a video stringing news clips of crimes by illegal immigrants, ranging from rape and murder to shooting at police.

Standing against a black backdrop scrawled with “End Migrant Crime”, and “Deport Illegals Now”, he accused his Democrat rival Vice President Kamala Harris of bringing in criminal illegal immigrants through “open border” policies, asserting that she was the “Border Czar”.

He cited an old quote of Harris that “we don’t want to treat people who cross the border illegally as criminals.”

While vowing mass deportations and stern action against criminal gangs, he said, “I’m hereby calling for the death penalty for any migrant that kills an American citizen or law enforcement officer.”

Trump said that crime in countries like Venezuela had gone down drastically because they have emptied their prisons and mental hospitals and sent the inmates to plague the US.

He said he would invoke an 18th-century law, Alien Enemies Act, “to target and dismantle every migrant criminal network”. But this law applies only to those from a foreign enemy country – and applying it across the board to all countries would be a challenge as would a mass deportation campaign.

Till August this year, 2.75 million illegal immigrants from around the world were caught entering illegally and 3.2 million last year.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman, a Republican said that while there a few incidents, it was an exaggeration to say the city was a “war zone” run by Venezuelan criminal gangs.

Trump called on stage a woman who publicised a video recording of the Venezuelan gang armed with a high-power rifle overrunning an apartment building.

Although Trump called Harris the “Border Czar”, her campaign has said that she was not put in charge of the border by Biden, but was only asked to work with other countries on stemming illegal immigration to the US.

After Aurora, Trump went to Reno in Nevada, a swing state that could determine the winner where his lead is a sliver of 0.2 per cent.

He repeated most of the elements of his speeches -- that Harris was a "Marxist", was incompetent, that the US was on a downhill trajectory, and that he would stop World War III, bring back jobs, cut taxes, reduce prices, and make the nation safe.