Trump calls US ‘like a garbage can for the world’ as he rails against illegal immigration

()– Former President Donald Trump said this Thursday that the United States is “like a garbage can for the world” when attacking illegal immigration at a campaign event in Arizona.

“We are a dump. We are like a garbage can for the world. That’s what happened,” Trump said at the event in Tempe, while criticizing the Biden-Harris administration’s management at the border.

“Every time I go up and talk about what they have done to our country I get angrier and angrier,” he continued. “It’s the first time I say garbage can. But you know what? “It is a very apt description.”

The comment, which comes less than two weeks before Election Day, marks the latest escalation in Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, who has made border security the central axis of his bid to return to the White House.

Trump, who has used dehumanizing language to describe undocumented immigrants since his 2016 campaign, has tried to paint them broadly as murderers, “madhouses” and dangerous, while regularly saying on the campaign trail that there is an “invasion.” ” ongoing. He has promised a crackdown on immigration if he is re-elected, and said earlier this year that he wants to deport between 15 million and 20 million people, a number drastically higher than the 1.5 million deportations carried out during his presidency.

He also repeated unfounded claims about Haitian immigrants eating the pets of Springfield, Ohio residents, which were first fed by his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance. And earlier this month, Trump suggested that undocumented immigrants who commit murder have “bad genes.”

In the final stretch of the race, Trump focused on immigration, telling voters that closing the border and expelling those who cross it illegally are the most urgent priorities for the country. And in doing so, he repeatedly blames his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, for the influx of undocumented immigrants, even inaccurately portraying her as “in charge of the border.”

The Biden-Harris administration saw a record number of illegal border crossings, with the flow only beginning to slow after the administration in June largely closed access to asylum for migrants crossing the border illegally, and used the same authority Trump tried to use during his time in office.

During the town hall on Wednesday, Harris stressed that “the American immigration system is broken” and argued that a bipartisan agreement from Congress is necessary when asked if the Biden administration should have done more on the issue sooner.

In contrast to Trump’s record on border security, he mocked the former president, who was invited but declined to participate in a forum, for failing to fulfill his promise to build a border wall along the southern border of the United States. and make Mexico pay for it.

Harris also rejected the notion that she was soft on border security and immigration, saying that “people have to earn it” to obtain U.S. citizenship and that she wanted to “strengthen our border.”

‘s Steve Contorno contributed to this report.