“These killers are coming into our country and raping and killing women,” he said (File)
Washington:
Minutes before taking the stage for the first presidential debate on Thursday, Donald Trump received a call from the mother of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, killed in Houston this month, allegedly by two Venezuelan men in the US illegally.
The mother, Alexis Nungaray, was returning a voicemail that Trump had left earlier in the day when she was at her daughter’s funeral, a family friend, Victoria Galvan, who witnessed the call, told Reuters.
Nungaray’s body was found in a creek near her home on June 17 after her attackers allegedly took her under a bridge, tied her up, removed her pants and strangled her, according to police and prosecutors.
The suspects – Johan José Martinez Rangel, 22, and Franklin José Pena Ramos, 26 – were detained by US border authorities in Texas earlier this year but were released pending a court hearing.
During the debate, Trump spoke about Nungaray’s case and the phone call while criticizing Biden over his immigration policies, accusing the Democrat of allowing murderers and rapists to enter the country.
“There have been many young women murdered by the same people he allowed to cross our border,” Trump said.
“These killers are coming into our country and raping and killing women. And that’s a terrible thing.”
Citing Nungaray’s case, he said: “This is horrible, what happened… We are literally an uncivilized country now.”
Trump’s attacks are part of a well-thumbed playbook he has used repeatedly since his first run for office in 2015 to classify immigrants illegally crossing the southern border as violent criminals.
He typically focuses on young, usually white women allegedly killed by Hispanic attackers to convey this message, avoiding cases involving male victims.
His opponents accuse him of cynically exploiting grieving families to fuel his narrative that foreign-born, often Hispanic, newcomers are part of an invading army.
“Part of what’s going on here is an effort to encourage xenophobia or animosity or ethnic hostility,” said Christopher Federico, a professor of political science and psychology at the University of Minnesota, adding that Trump appears to be playing into racist stereotypes that paint the Latinos. men as threats to the “perceived purity of white womanhood.”
Studies generally conclude that there is no evidence that immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans, and critics say Trump’s rhetoric reinforces racist tropes.
Still, polls show that the visceral message resonates with many voters. It is amplified by conservative media outlets, pro-Trump online influencers and, sometimes, the grieving family and friends of the women killed.
Galvan, 27, blamed Nungaray’s death on Biden’s easing of some restrictions on the US-Mexico border.
“I think Jocelyn would definitely still be here if President Trump was our president,” Galvan said, adding that she planned to vote for the first time in a presidential election and that she would support Trump.
Despite the lack of evidence, about three-quarters of Republicans in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in May said illegal migrants in the US “are a danger to public safety.”
Well used manual
Trump attacked Biden over record levels of migrants caught illegally crossing the US-Mexico border. Immigration is a big concern for voters, especially among conservatives.
In response, Biden blames Trump for urging Republicans to block a bipartisan U.S. Senate bill earlier this year that aimed to bolster border security and portrayed Trump’s policies as unnecessarily cruel.
“Donald Trump is using the pain and loss of American families for the benefit of one person and one person only: Donald Trump,” Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in a statement. “His sick and dehumanizing comments do nothing to make our border safer and are beneath the office of the President of the United States.”
A digital ad featuring violent crime and criticizing Biden was launched last week in seven swing states as part of an initiative by the conservative group Building America’s Future.
The ad focuses on Rachel Morin – a mother of five raped and killed while jogging in August 2023 near her Maryland home – and her accused killer, an immigrant from El Salvador who is in the US illegally.
“Joe Biden’s open border, a nightmare for American women,” says a female voice as the face of Morin’s accused killer is displayed next to Biden’s.
Trump’s approach echoes the oft-cited “Willie Horton” ad that attacked Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential campaign, according to Susan Del Percio, a Republican strategist who has been critical of Trump’s immigration rhetoric.
Horton was black and critics said the ad – which effectively boosted the candidacy of Republican George HW Bush – sought to provoke fear based on race.
“Trump is saying, ‘We don’t like immigrants and now here’s another horrible reason to dislike them. They’re going to come after you and kill you,'” she said.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Biden’s border policies have allowed dangerous criminals to enter the U.S. and that Trump has sought to support victims’ families.
“President Trump says their names, calls their mothers and supports their families, while Joe Biden continues to ignore their suffering and shelter millions of dangerous criminal illegal immigrants,” Leavitt said in a statement.
Trump has used inflammatory language to describe illegal immigrants in the US, including that they are “poisoning the blood” of the country.
Mixed Reception
Parents of some victims have welcomed Trump’s efforts to publicize the brutal killings, while others say he is simply politicizing the deaths of their loved ones.
In 2018, Trump publicized Mollie Tibbetts’ case after the 20-year-old University of Iowa student was unlawfully killed by a Mexican immigrant in the U.S., but Tibbetts’ father chided Trump at the time for exploiting the tragedy for political gain.
Laura Calderwood, Tibbetts’ mother, told Reuters she believed her daughter’s killer was a troubled person, but that the murder had nothing to do with her immigration status.
“It was an anomaly,” said Calderwood, a Democrat who plans to vote for Biden. “There are a lot of illegal immigrants here and they don’t go out and kill people.”
Michelle Root, whose daughter Sarah was killed in Nebraska in 2016 when her car was illegally rammed by a drunk driver in the US, told Reuters that then-President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden never responded when she wrote to them at the time to raise awareness about the case.
Obama’s personal office and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump, then a presidential candidate, invited her to meet with him before a rally in Omaha, she said. The meeting convinced Root — a longtime Democrat who voted twice for Obama — to support Trump.
He later called her and asked for permission to mention Sarah’s case when accepting the Republican presidential nomination that summer, she said.
“If it weren’t for him, Sarah wouldn’t have a voice,” she said.
Patty Morin, mother of Rachel Morin, was “incredibly emotional” when Trump reached out to her earlier this month to offer condolences, her lawyer, Randolph Rice, told Reuters.
“During the 20-minute phone call, the president asked about Rachel and her family and how they were doing,” Rice said in an email. “She has not yet heard from the Biden administration.”
(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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