Trump makes baseless claims about immigration and voter fraud

Fresh off his trip to the southern border earlier this week, former President Donald J. Trump baselessly suggested Saturday that President Biden had “smuggled” violent anti-American forces across the border.

At a rally in Greensboro, N.C., Mr. Trump — who has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States as part of the 91 felony counts he currently faces in four separate criminal trials — alleged broadly and without evidence that the U.S. border policy Mr. Biden amounted to a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America.”

Mr. Trump has previously suggested without evidence that Democrats were encouraging migrants to cross the border illegally to register them to vote. On Saturday, he told the crowd in Greensboro that he believed Biden was “giving aid and comfort” to America’s foreign enemies.

He went on to frame this year’s election as a matter of “whether the foreign militaries that Joe Biden smuggled across our border will be allowed to stay or whether they will be told to get out of here and go back home.”

Mr. Trump has often blamed the surge of migrants at the border on Mr. Biden and Democrats, who he says are too lenient on those who cross illegally. But there is no evidence to support the claim that Mr. Biden trafficked migrants across the border.

There is also no evidence that Democrats encouraged the surge of migrants at the border to illegally register them to vote, one of many claims Mr. Trump has made as he promoted widespread and often debunked claims of voter fraud in his country . the 2020 elections.

Mr. Trump repeated these claims of fraud at the Greensboro rally.

He said Republicans needed to guarantee a turnout in November so large it was “too big to manipulate,” reviving his claim that the only way Democrats could win this year was if they cheated. And his campaign spread to the crowd with signs reading “Too Big to Rig.”

But Mr Trump also appeared to link his predictions about voter interference to the migrant crisis, accusing Mr Biden and his allies of trying to “collapse the American system, overturning the will of actual American voters and establish a new power base that will give them control for generations.”

The border crisis has worsened during the Biden administration. Republicans have accused Mr. Biden of being negligent on this issue, arguing that his promises to roll back Mr. Trump’s tough border policies have led to the continued influx.

Democrats have pointed to a wave of migration around the world. And Mr. Biden has blamed Republicans for trying to block bipartisan efforts to address the issue, including a bill in Congress that would have significantly addressed border crossings. Republicans defeated the bill at Trump’s insistence.

During his campaign, Trump has increasingly warned of threats he believes are damaging to traditional American values. The former president typically relies on the language of war to describe the border crisis, which he describes as an invasion.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump visited Eagle Pass, Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott has sent the Texas National Guard to patrol the border. After receiving a briefing on the state’s efforts, Mr. Trump said the migrants “look like warriors to me,” adding that “something is going on — it’s bad.”

During his speech on Saturday, Trump again painted those crossing the border with a broad brush, saying they came from “mental institutions and mental institutions” or were former prisoners sent across the border by leaders of other countries sent. to land.

And he again rattled off a number of crimes allegedly committed by migrants, stoking fear and portraying Democrats as ignoring crime and disorder. But border officials, including some who worked for Trump, have said most migrants crossing the border are members of vulnerable families fleeing poverty and violence.

Mr. Trump plans an extreme expansion of his anti-immigration policies if he wins the 2025 election, including what he calls the “largest domestic deportation operation” in American history.

A new Trump administration would build massive camps across the United States to detain undocumented immigrants. And Mr Trump would reintroduce a Covid-era policy that would deny asylum claims on the grounds that migrants carry diseases such as tuberculosis.