Former President Donald J. Trump suggested to Fox News that China was orchestrating illegal immigration and that Latin American governments were picking criminals to send to the United States.
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Donald Trump in Washington last week.
Former President Donald J. Trump, in an interview that aired on Fox News on Sunday, suggested falsely that Latin American governments were picking the citizens they didn’t want and shipping them to the U.S. border, resurrecting a claim that was central to his 2016 campaign.
He also accused the Chinese Communist Party — without providing any evidence — of orchestrating illegal immigration into the United States, and said he believed China would try to interfere in the presidential election, adding that he liked President Xi Jinping “a lot.”
Asked by the interviewer, Maria Bartiromo, whether he thought “military-aged men” from China were “being directed by the Communist Party to come here,” Mr. Trump said: “I believe so.”
Referring to a recent incident in New York City in which a group of men identified by police officials as migrants from Latin America attacked police officers, Mr. Trump said: “The heads of these countries are smart. They’re not sending the people that are doing a great job and that they love in the country. They’re sending people, for the most part, that they don’t want, and they’re putting them into caravans.”
That statement echoed one of the most incendiary lines from his first campaign announcement speech in 2015: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said at the time, continuing: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” He also has repeatedly and falsely said that migrants from South and Central America are coming from “mental institutions” and jails.
Mr. Trump also spoke approvingly, as he has before, of the military-style mass deportation of Mexican immigrants under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
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Source: nytimes.com
