Republican nominee holds rally in Aurora, Colorado, and exploits swirl of local rumors to push anti-immigrant plan<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Donald Trump intensified his politics of nativism and xenophobia on Friday by announcing a sweeping plan to deport Venezuelans he claimed have \u201cinfected\u201d a once-peaceful city in Colorado.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Republican presidential nominee held a campaign rally in Aurora<\/a> on a stage adorned with posters displaying mugshots of people in prison-orange uniforms with descriptions including \u201cillegal immigrant gang members from Venezuela\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump told the crowd: \u201cI\u2019m announcing today that, upon taking office, we will have an \u2018Operation Aurora\u2019 at the federal level to expedite the removals of these savage gangs.\u201d He pledged to invoke the Alien Enemies Act<\/a>, a 1798 law that allows the president to deport any non-citizen from a country that the US is at war with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe 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,\u201d he continued as the crowd roared approval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If they return to the US, Trump said, they will serve an automatic 10 years in prison without parole. \u201cI\u2019m 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\u2019s going to go very quickly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rally represented a detour for Trump, since Colorado<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aurora, a city of about 340,000 people near Denver, hit headlines in August<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s Republican mayor, Mike Coffman, called Trump\u2019s claims \u201cgrossly exaggerated\u201d and insisted<\/a>: \u201cThe narrative is not accurate by any stretch of the imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Friday\u2019s rally, Trump played a series of news clips, accompanied by dramatic music, describing TDA\u2019s 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 \u201ccriminal\u201d and the \u201cworst border tsar\u201d in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy message today is very simple,\u201d he said. \u201cNo 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The former president promised that 5 November, when the election is held, will be \u201cliberation day\u201d, prompting chants of \u201cUSA! USA!\u201d from the crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI 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\u2019s going to happen very, very fast. Gonna get them the hell out of our country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump added later: \u201cWe\u2019re talking a lot about Venezuela, because Aurora is really infected by Venezuela, but they\u2019re coming from all countries.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The remark recalled past dehumanising language in which Trump claimed undocumented immigrants were \u201cpoisoning the blood of our country\u201d and, earlier this week, suggested that those suspected in homicide cases \u201chave bad genes\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In similar fashion on Friday, Stephen Miller, a former top aide<\/a> 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\u2019s appearance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLook at all these photos around me,\u201d Miller said. \u201cAre 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?\u201d The crowd roared \u201cno\u201d in reply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ex-president has long made immigration his signature issue<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s Democratic leaders accuse Trump and other Republicans<\/a> of overstating problems in Aurora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Representative Jason Crow told the Associated Press<\/a>: \u201cWhat is occurring is minimal and isolated. And to be clear, it\u2019s never acceptable, right? We never say any level is acceptable. But it\u2019s not a surge. It\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2002<\/a>in Nevada on Thursday: \u201cHe would prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n