‘Poisoning the blood of our country’: Trump amps up attack on immigrants

With a border deal hanging in the balance and the Iowa caucuses a month away, Donald Trump amplified his attack on immigrants at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday.

“They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” the former president said. “They’ve poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world they’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia.”

While in the White House, Trump sought to deter immigration by building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, building some 450 miles of fencing along the nearly 2,000-mile border, much of which replaced existing barriers. In addition to strict border security measures, his administration also implemented a travel ban for people from several predominantly Muslim countries.

If reelected, Trump has pledged to finish the border wall, reinstitute travel bans and launch mass deportation efforts. He has also pledged to end birthright citizenship for those born to immigrants living in the country illegally.

Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) met with administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, on Saturday as they sought to forge a compromise on border security that could also unlock aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

But Trump was undeterred in his attack on immigrants Saturday.

“All over the world, they’re pouring into our country. Nobody is even looking at them, they just come in and the crime is going to be tremendous, the terrorism is going to be,” Trump said.