Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event in Phoenix on June 6.ASH PONDERS/The New York Times News Service
Donald Trump is promising to cancel a new executive order from President Joe Biden that will temporarily shut down the southern U.S. border when the number of people crossing illegally surpasses 2,500 a day.
Mr. Trump dismissed Mr. Biden’s order as “pro illegal immigration,” telling a crowd of Arizona supporters Thursday that it will continue to allow millions of migrants into the country.
His made his comments two days after Mr. Biden said he would use his executive authority to limit the record numbers of people entering the U.S. outside formal border crossings, many of them seeking asylum.
The order was widely seen as an attempt by Mr. Biden to blunt criticism of his administration during a neck-and-neck presidential election campaign against Mr. Trump, as large numbers of migrants strain resources in cities across the United States. The border has become a rising priority even among Democrats, who have traditionally been more pro-immigration than Mr. Trump’s Republican Party.
“It’s all fake,” Mr. Trump said, speaking to a crowd at Dream City Church, a megachurch in Phoenix.
“Quite simply, Joe Biden wants an invasion. I want a deportation,” he added. He pledged to rescind the executive order on the first day of a second presidential term, saying he would also begin “the largest domestic deportation operation in our history.”
It was a promise with historical resonance: In 2021, on Mr. Biden’s first day in office, he cancelled construction of the border wall Mr. Trump had begun to build, and repealed other immigration-related measures issued by the former president.
Earlier this year, Mr. Trump successfully urged Republicans to oppose a bipartisan immigration reform bill. Mr. Biden this week faulted Mr. Trump for the bill’s failure, saying the former president told Republicans “that he didn’t want to fix the issue; he wanted to use it to attack me.”
Mr. Trump’s pledges to build a border wall underpinned his first presidential campaign.
In Phoenix, where border worries dominated questions from an audience of exuberant supporters – including one man in a brick-wall-themed suit – Mr. Trump underscored how critical the issue remains to his effort to return to the White House.
“Arizona is being turned into a dumping ground for the dungeons of the third world,” he said, repeating unsubstantiated claims that foreign leaders are releasing prisoners so they can migrate across a porous U.S. border.
He sought to portray illegal immigration as the root of the country’s most pressing problems. He faulted migrants for crime and blamed them for “an all-out war on the working-class minorities of our country.”
At the same time, “illegal immigration is causing rent and housing costs to skyrocket,” Mr. Trump said.
Rates of violent crime have fallen during Mr. Biden’s time in office; the argument that illegal migrants cause more crime has no basis in established fact. Economists have largely held the pandemic responsible for growth in the racial wealth gap between white and Black Americans.
Recent studies, however, have drawn a link between high rates of migration and elevated home prices. In April, a JPMorgan report found that migrants now constitute roughly a third of the demand for additional housing.
The same report found that migrants have contributed to a robust job market, accelerated economic growth and – because they have boosted labour supply – dampened inflation.
The Phoenix rally, held by groups associated with Turning Point, a deeply conservative advocacy organization, took place at a pivotal time in the campaign.
It was Mr. Trump’s first major political rally since a New York jury found him guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a US$130,000 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Mr. Trump has promised to appeal his conviction.
But he has moved quickly to harvest political advantage from his new status as the first felon to run for president. In Phoenix, an introductory video, played at ear-splitting volume, showed news clips tracking the judicial cases against him. It culminated in Mr. Trump’s comments after the guilty verdict, in which he described himself as the sole bulwark against a judiciary establishment intent on eroding personal freedoms.
The video elicited cheers.
Some in the audience waved signs with the words “Never Surrender.” Mr. Trump boasted about the many millions of dollars his campaign has raised since he was found guilty.
At the same time, polls have shown that Americans, by modest margins, approve of the guilty verdict. A slim majority believes Mr. Trump’s conduct constituted a crime. The polls have also suggested a post-conviction shift toward Mr. Biden, albeit one so small it fits within the margin of error.
For Mr. Trump, that has created new incentive to direct attention toward the border, an issue on which he believes he is stronger than Mr. Biden.
At one point on Thursday, Mr. Trump brought to the stage Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, now in his 90s, who was widely condemned for racially profiling Latinos. As president, Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt after his deputies continued to detain people based solely on their immigration status, defying a court order.
Mr. Trump welcomed him with an exchange of kisses on the cheek.
“This guy did some job on the border,” he said, before promising that he would take a similar approach.
He said he will dispatch “massive portions of federal law enforcement to immigration enforcement,” including agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
“I want to send Joe Biden’s illegal aliens where they belong, back home,” Mr. Trump said.