Former President Donald Trump vilified undocumented immigrants during a campaign stop in Nevada on Sunday, the latest example of him ramping up anti-immigrant rhetoric ahead of the GOP nominating contest that begins next month.
The front-runner for the GOP nomination stoked fears about migrants coming across the US-Mexico border and pointed to examples of what he said were undocumented immigrants committing violent crimes in the US as he addressed a crowd of supporters in Reno.
In Nevada – which is third in the GOP nominating calendar and also has a large Latino population – he claimed migrants were “invading” the US from prisons and “mental institutions” in other countries and repeated his pledge to carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history”.
In the final weeks before voting begins, Trump is reverting to the kind of anti-immigrant language he used to secure the nomination in 2016 – and facing a backlash reminiscent of that campaign.
The former president’s speech in Reno came a day after he doubled down on language condemned for its links to white supremacist rhetoric, saying at a campaign stop in New Hampshire that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country”.
His comments on Saturday drew immediate criticism from a 2024 GOP rival, Chris Christie. The former New Jersey governor said on Sunday that Trump was “dog whistling” to blame the stress caused by the economy and foreign conflicts “on people from areas that don’t look like us”.
“He’s disgusting,” Christie said on State of the Union.
Still, even in the face of myriad legal challenges that threaten to complicate the election year, Trump’s lead among GOP base voters remains strong, and the flurry of travel to early contest states like Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada underscores an aggressive effort by the former president’s team to maintain that polling edge.
Trump on Sunday outlined many of the steps he said he would take to expand his administration’s hardline immigration policies, including shifting “massive portions of federal law enforcement to immigration enforcement” and moving “thousands of troops currently stationed overseas to our own southern border.”
The former president has vowed to reinstate and expand the travel bans he first imposed on several Muslim-majority countries and African nations in 2017. Trump’s potential second-term plans also include rounding up undocumented immigrants already in the US and placing them in detention centres to await deportation.
The Nevada appearance follows campaign stops in Iowa and New Hampshire, with a return trip to Iowa planned for Tuesday.
Trump told supporters on Sunday to “pretend we’re losing” as he sought to ensure a high turnout in the state’s February caucuses.
“Pretend we’re tied. Pretend we’re losing by three. You have to do that because, you know, the worst thing is everybody’s like, ‘Oh, what do we have to vote for? Trump is killing them. And then bad things happen,” Trump told supporters gathered at a convention centre in Reno.
Trump leads the GOP primary field nationally by about 40 percentage points, according to the latest update of the Poll of Polls. In the new average, Trump has 61 per cent support to 17 per cent for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and 11 per cent for former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.
The former president is hoping to blunt any momentum his main rivals for the GOP nomination may have gained in recent weeks. Haley picked up a key endorsement last week from Governor Chris Sununu in New Hampshire, home of the first-in-the-nation Republican primary. DeSantis, who is counting on a strong performance in Iowa to boost his campaign, has shown a new aggressiveness in taking on Trump over the past week, launching attacks during the town hall on his record as president and his erratic rhetoric.
Meanwhile, the super PAC backing DeSantis, Never Back Down, is in turmoil after losing a fourth senior official this month. Chief strategist Jeff Roe resigned on Saturday over comments made by the major fundraising group’s chairman and interim CEO, Scott Wagner, about the high-profile departures of three other officials in early December.
DeSantis and Trump are among several Republican candidates competing in Nevada’s party caucuses on 8 February. Haley opted for the state’s presidential primary on 6 February. But only the caucuses will determine the allocation of delegates to next year’s Republican convention.
Trump’s stop in Reno also comes days after a Nevada grand jury indicted six people for acting as fake electors in a scheme to overturn Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Trump himself has been criminally charged over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and continues to falsely claim the election was stolen from him and spread conspiracy theories about voter fraud.
On Sunday night, the former president expressed sympathy for Nevada’s fake electors, including Michael McDonald, the state’s GOP chairman, whom he described as “a tremendous guy” who “gets treated so unfairly and he loves this country and he loves this state”. Trump also praised by name several other fake electors who are due to be arraigned on Monday.
A federal judge overseeing Trump’s 2020 election interference case last week temporarily suspended all procedural deadlines, which could delay the start of the trial in March. The development was welcomed by Trump and his legal team, who have been pushing to delay the trial until after the November election.
The election interference case is one of several in which Trump is a defendant. He faces 91 charges in four separate cases and has pleaded not guilty to all of them.
