Trump's Arizona border visit heavy on security talk, false claims

CORONADO NATIONAL MEMORIAL — In a Thursday visit to the border in Cochise County, flanked by local law enforcement, Border Patrol union leaders and families of violent-crime victims, Donald Trump mostly repeated numerous false claims on immigration and warned the country would “wither away and die” without border-security reforms.

“We will seal the border, stop the invasion and launch the largest deportation effort in American history,” the Republican presidential nominee said as he stood beside the border wall, about 20 miles west of Naco — the same location where his running mate JD Vance made a campaign appearance three weeks ago.

In his hour-long talk Thursday, Trump shared the microphone with families of homicide victims, in cases where the suspects are immigrants in the country illegally. Three speakers shared emotional stories of loss and voiced support for Trump in the upcoming election.

“I just really, really, really want everybody to please take into consideration how important border control is because we’re losing very innocent people to heinous crimes,” said Alexis Nungaray, the mother of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was strangled to death in Houston in June.

Republicans have sought to highlight high-profile crimes committed by immigrants released by Border Patrol during the Biden administration, and Trump falsely said violent crime has been soaring, despite law enforcement data showing the opposite trend.

Substantial research has found immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans and, amid a record surge in migrant arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border, violent crime has been falling in most cities across the country, law enforcement data show.

“There is no evidence of a ‘huge increase in crime’ caused by migrants,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow with the immigrant-rights group American Immigration Council. “Crime is falling in virtually every metro area in the country, including in areas which have absorbed hundreds of thousands of migrants over the past six years.”

Trump’s visit to Cochise County was the fourth event held in a battleground state this week, as Democrats celebrate Harris’ presidential nomination in Chicago, the Associated Press reported.

“When I left office I gave Kamala Harris the strongest and most secure border in American history,” Trump said on Thursday. “Then Kamala came in and dismantled every single Trump border policy and halted all wall construction.”

Border arrests between ports of entry dropped significantly at the start of the pandemic, but began rising toward the end of Trump’s term. By December 2020, Border Patrol had the highest number of arrests for any December since 1999, according to David J. Bier, director of immigration studies for libertarian think-tank The Cato Institute.

“He doesn’t like to talk about that part of his record,” Bier said in a June podcast. “He likes to talk about April 2020, when the world was shut down and there weren’t any jobs for people to go to (in the U.S.) But December 2020 is a better reflection of his record.”

Trump was also joined Thursday by Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels and the head of the Border Patrol union to echo his tough-on-border security message, which was themed “Make America Safe Again,” the AP reported.

“To my right is what we call Trump wall. This was wall that was built under President Trump,” said Paul Perez, the president of the Border Patrol union. “To my left, we have what we call Kamala wall. It’s just sitting there doing nothing, lying down.”

In response to a reporter’s question, Trump briefly mentioned the July 13 assassination attempt against him, at a rally in Butler, Pa.

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“I have great respect for Secret Service. The job they do, including a month a half ago when they were jumping on top of me with bullets flying right at them,” Trump said. “Mistakes were made, and they’re gonna learn from the mistakes, but I have great respect.”

Several counter-sniper teams were positioned around Trump Thursday as he spoke to the media. Security forces were also visible on the Mexico side of the border, including several men with rifles and tactical gear, according to the AP.

The day before Trump’s visit, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly criticized Trump for pressuring Republican Senators to vote against a bipartisan border-security bill earlier this year. Kelly also criticized Trump for his “photo op” at the Arizona-Mexico border.

“He very simply would not allow Senate Republicans to vote for this bipartisan legislation, and it was because he wanted to have this as a campaign issue,” Kelly said in a Wednesday press call. “Donald Trump did not fix this the last time he was in office, and he doesn’t really want to fix it now.”

On Thursday Trump also repeated his unsubstantiated claim that countries such as Venezuela were emptying their prisons to send criminals to the U.S.

There’s no evidence for this claim, which seems to have originated from a Breitbart article written by a former border agent, said Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight for the Washington Office on Latin America, a nonprofit human-rights group.

“I’m reading literally hundreds of feeds and papers in the (Latin America) region, I’m in constant touch with NGOs in the region, and I’ve never seen any evidence of this,” Isacson said.

On Thursday Trump again promised mass deportations of undocumented U.S. residents, but also sought to distance himself from the “Project 2025” platform that advocates for it.

About 11 million undocumented residents live in the U.S., and about 4.4 million U.S.-born children live with an unauthorized immigrant parent, according to the Pew Research Center.

Neither ICE nor DHS has the capacity to carry out the kind of mass deportations Trump has promised, Isacson said, meaning he’d likely have to rely on an “unprecedented” use of the armed forces.

Most Americans would discover that someone they know, rely on or work with would get swept up in the deportation effort, and the reality would be a shock, he said.

“How are they going to react when that person who they like, or whom they depend on, just gets dragged away?” he said.

In response to Trump’s visit, a release from the Arizona Border Communities Coalition highlighted comments from long-time borderlands residents, including Cochise County resident Peggy Christianson, who described herself as “the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of a cattle-ranching family” who settled on the southern border.

“I have watched various administrations come and go, often using the complexity of border problems to bolster their own political agendas,” Christianson said. “My faith as a Presbyterian pastor has taught me that when we help the ‘least of these, my brothers and sisters,’ we are ministering to Jesus Christ himself. … I know that when we stop demonizing our neighbors, we just might find common solutions to our problems.”