WASHINGTON: Donald Trump said on Monday that illegal immigrants were bringing “bad genes” into the United States, doubling down on previous inflammatory rhetoric about migrants poisoning the blood of the country.
Trump was criticising his Democratic presidential rival Vice President Kamala Harris in a radio interview when he brought up government figures showing there were 13,000 immigrants in the United States who were not in federal immigration detention, despite homicide convictions.
“How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers, many of them murdered far more than one person? They are now happily living in the United States,” he told conservative host Hugh Hewitt.
“You know now, a murderer -- I believe this -- it´s in their genes. We´ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn´t be here that are criminals.”
Trump was misconstruing data released in September by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
The figures don´t include people incarcerated outside of ICE facilities -- in state, local or other federal facilities, for example -- and they cover a period spanning decades, including when Trump was president.