During a campaign rally in Wisconsin over the weekend, former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, suggested that his plan to deport millions of immigrants in the United States would utilize violence on a massive scale.
Trump falsely insinuated that immigrants living in the U.S. were mostly violent criminals, a claim that has been debunked many times over the past several years. He also peddled the false claim that violent immigrants had “taken over sections” of the state of Colorado — a blatant attempt at fear mongering for political gain.
Trump has made immigration a focal point of his presidential campaign. He has vowed to become a dictator in order to achieve his far right immigration goals, and has promised to use the military to establish huge camps to detain people in what would be “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” conjuring imagery reminiscent of Nazi concentration camps. He has repeatedly spewed fascist, racist rhetoric against immigrants, alleging that they are “poisoning the blood of the country.”
During his rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, Trump noted that his proposal to round up immigrants would require violence.
“Getting them out will be a bloody story,” Trump said. “[Undocumented immigrants] should have never been allowed to come into our country. Nobody checked them.”
Trump did not elaborate on what a “bloody story” would mean, specifically, but the statement indicates that his plan would require a brutal military campaign against immigrants in the U.S.
Trump frequently tries to justify his attacks on undocumented immigrants by claiming that they are increasing crime rates in the country. However, several studies have debunked those claims over the years, and more recent investigations have shown that the opposite is true: Where more immigrants reside, crime rates tend to lessen, not increase.
One such study showed that U.S.-born residents were more than two times more likely to commit violent crimes, in general, than immigrants were, with U.S.-born residents 2.52 times more likely to commit homicide than undocumented immigrants.
Another study examined Republican governors’ cruel PR stunt to bus immigrants to Democratic-run cities in the U.S., falsely promising that jobs and shelter were awaiting them there. According to that research, those cities actually saw their crime levels drop after the buses of immigrants arrived.
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