ERIE, Pa. — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, in a speech that repeatedly painted a dark caricature of immigrants, seized on a recent report to claim falsely that thousands of immigrants with homicide records had been allowed to go free by the Biden administration.
“They’re coming into our cities and our small towns, here in Pennsylvania and all over the country,” Trump said in a speech that meandered widely and made several other unsupported assertions. “These towns are petrified. Even if they’re not there yet, they will be there.”
Trump cited a new letter from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to falsely suggest that more than 13,000 immigrants convicted of homicide had been let into the United States on President Joe Biden’s watch and then released. But allies of Vice President Kamala Harris and nonpartisan experts say Trump is badly misrepresenting the data.
The people he cited entered the United States over several decades, including during the Trump presidency. And while they are listed as “non-detained,” that means only that ICE is not detaining them; in many cases, they are being held by another agency, and are often serving prison sentences.
“The data in this letter is being misinterpreted,” a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement. “The data goes back decades; it includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more, the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this Administration.”
The spokesperson added, “It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners.”
Even so, Trump spent much of his two-hour speech on elaborate descriptions of the individuals purportedly roaming the nation, calling them “stone-cold killers,” “worse than any of our criminals,” “monsters,” and people who “have no heart” and “don’t care who they kill.”
The ICE letter, which has also been cited by other conservatives, was sent on Sept. 25 by Patrick J. Lechleitner, the agency’s deputy director, to Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Tex.), in response to his request for information on noncitizens who are on ICE’s docket and have been charged with or convicted of a crime.
While Trump focused much of his speech in Erie on immigrants, he hit on several other themes that have made regular appearances in his stump speech, including the notion that he would easily win the election if Democrats did not somehow rig the system.
“If they didn’t cheat I wouldn’t even be here today, you know why? I wouldn’t have to campaign,” Trump said. “I’m only here because they cheat. And they cheat in this state, especially in Philadelphia … Philadelphia is out of control, Detroit is out of control, Atlanta is out of control.”
He added, “If God came down from a high and said, ‘I’m going to be your vote tabulator for this election,’ I would leave this podium right now because I wouldn’t have to speak.” A range of investigations from election officials in both parties have repeatedly found no evidence of significant voter fraud in the United States.
Trump also repeated his recent claim that Harris is “mentally impaired,” echoing remarks he made Saturday that drew condemnation from advocates for people with disabilities.
“Crooked Joe Biden became mentally impaired,” Trump said Sunday. “But Lyin’ Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way. There’s something wrong with Kamala and I just don’t know what it is, but there is definitely something missing, and you know what? Everybody knows it.”
“We need Trump!” the crowd cheered.
Harris since the beginning of the campaign has dismissed such comments as part of Trump’s longtime “playbook” of personal insults and derisive comments about individuals and groups. She has said that she is seeking to “turn the page” from Trump’s politics of putting people down to a new era of lifting people up.
Few issues have become as heated during the campaign as immigration, an area where polls suggest voters trust Trump more than Harris. As Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), have unleashed ever-harsher rhetoric about immigrants, Harris has sought to deflect criticism that she and Biden took an overly permissive approach to the issue that led to repeated scenes of chaos at the border.
Harris visited the southern border on Friday, stressing the enforcement-oriented approach taken by the administration over the past year that has led to a sharp drop in the number of border crossings. She also criticized Trump for urging congressional allies to torpedo a tough bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year.
“The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games,” she said at her appearance in Douglas, Ariz., adding, “I will reach across the aisle, and I will embrace common-sense approaches and new technologies to get the job done.”
Harris also took aim at Trump’s record while in office and his current harsh rhetoric about immigrants.
“In the four years Donald Trump was president, he did nothing to solve our immigration problems,” Harris said. “He separated families. He ripped toddlers out of their mothers’ arms, put children in cages and tried to end protections for ‘dreamers.’ He made the challenges at the border worse. And he is still fanning the flames of fear and division.”
In Sunday’s speech, Trump claimed that Harris “doesn’t have the capability” to handle the border — saying she’s had almost four years as vice president to get it under control — and called her a “communist,” observing that his previous description of the vice president as a “Marxist” wasn’t landing (“unfortunately nobody knows what that is”). Trump has had a hard time defining Harris since she replaced Biden at the top of the ticket, and has tested several nicknames for her, including “Lyin’ Kamala.”
He also falsely claimed that Harris prosecuted “her political opponents like me.” At one point, Trump again baselessly questioned whether Harris had really worked at McDonald’s, as he has done on several earlier occasions.
After the rally, Erie County GOP Chair Tom Eddy said Trump’s criticisms of Harris were designed to appeal to his most hardcore supporters, with the goal that they would then persuade undecided voters. “At these rallies, he’s talking to his base,” Eddy said. “And I think the hope is that his base will go out and talk to other people.”
Much of Trump’s speech re-upped issues he has cited at other rallies. He recited a poem about a snake that he uses to speak on immigration. He recounted a shooter’s attempt to assassinate him in Butler, Pa., saying the city had now become a “big tourist site.”
“Lock her up,” the crowd chanted after Trump called Harris “stupid.”
He repeated his false claim that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “turned down thousands of troops” ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Even though Trump acknowledged that he is running against Harris, he repeatedly brought up Biden. He reminisced about his June 27 debate against Biden, claimed Biden was a better candidate than Harris and even surmised that “if she does really badly they’ll probably put him back.” Harris officially accepted the Democratic nomination in August, and there is no mechanism for installing Biden as the nominee.
Trump even recalled the moment in their debate when the two presidents bickered about their golf game.
“The worst of all was when he said ‘I want to play him in golf’,” Trump said. “He wants to play me in golf. You ever see him play?” Trump then proceeded to imitate Biden. “That guy can’t play.”
