RENO: Former United States President Donald Trump ramped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric at a campaign rally in Nevada on Friday, as election day draws closer.
The Republican Presidential nominee made the comment twice, first during a rally in Aurora, Colorado, then in Reno, Nevada.
“I’m hereby calling for the death penalty for any migrant who kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer,” Trump said, moments after claiming that “America is known all throughout the world as occupied America.”
He has repeatedly made false claims linking migrants to crimes. Attacking migrants is a staple of Trump’s speeches, going as far back as his first presidential bid that began in 2015, where he called Mexican migrants “drug dealers, criminal, and rapists.”
“We’re being occupied by a criminal force,” Trump said on Friday.
Obama slams Trump’s new ‘norms’
STUDIES AND STATISTICS
A myriad of studies published in peer reviewed journals have examined the relationship between migrants and crime in the US. One 2018 study found no significant relationship between immigration and crime between 1994 and 2014, while a more recent 2024 paper found that immigrants had lower incarceration rates compared to native born US citizens over a 150-year period.
“November 5, 2024, will be liberation day in America,” Trump said at his most recent rally in Reno, adding that he will rescue “every town that has been invaded and conquered.”
Another paper published in 2020 found no evidence of increasing criminality among immigrants. A national institute of Justice funded study which examined data from the Texas Department of Public Safety found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native born us citizens for violent and drug crimes.
Trumps attempts at fearmongering are bolstered by other false claims the former president has made, such as the belief the crime is rising in the US.
“Hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later”: Trump
An article published on the Pew Research Centre’s website used data from both the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to see how crime rates have changed in the US over time. Both the FBI and BJS show declines in violent crime in the US. The FBI data showed that the violent crime rate dropped by 49% from 1993 to 2022, while the BJS statistics stated that violent crime rates dropped by 71% over the same time period.
Trump anti-immigration rhetoric has drawn comparisons to Adolf Hitler, as the former president once said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country. A similar term that can be found in “Mein Kampf”, Hitler’s 1925 autobiographical manifesto.