Former President Donald Trump, addressing a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday, expressed his views on immigration, claiming that immigrants from Africa and Asia are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
During the campaign rally, the Republican frontrunner criticized the influx of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump asserted that Democrats had allowed 15-16 million undocumented immigrants into the country since he left office, abandoning what he referred to as his strict immigration policies, including Remain-In-Mexico and the construction of the border wall.
In his speech, Trump attacked the opposition party for admitting immigrants from “all over the world,” specifically mentioning Africa and Asia. He suggested that these individuals were coming from “mental institutions and prisons.”
“We got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done. They poisoned. Mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world,” Trump stated, receiving applause from the audience.
He continued, “They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world. They’re pouring into our country. Nobody’s even looking at them. They just come in. The crime is going to be tremendous. The terrorism is going to be… And we built a tremendous piece of the wall, and then we’re going to build more.”
It’s worth noting that Trump had previously used the phrase “poisoning the blood” in an interview with the right-leaning media outlet The National Pulse in September. His comments were criticized by civil rights advocates, including Jonathan Greenblatt, the president of the Anti-Defamation League, who labeled them as “racist, xenophobic, and despicable.”
Since launching his second presidential bid, Trump has intensified his anti-immigration rhetoric, promising to have the United States military crack down on illegal border crossings.