Donald Trump suggested Monday that people in the country illegally who have committed crimes have “bad genes,” the latest example of rhetoric by the former president that dehumanizes immigrants and disparages them in racial terms.
Trump made the comment during an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt while criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris’s record on border security. Trump accused her of “allowing people to come through an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers” — repeating a claim that significantly distorts data recently released by the federal government.
“You know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes,” Trump said. “And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn’t be here, that are criminals.”
Trump and his allies have seized on data released last month by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Congress, claiming it shows that President Joe Biden’s administration has let free more than 13,000 undocumented immigrants with homicide convictions. The number is larger — roughly 425,000 — when expanded to include all criminal convictions. However, the data goes back decades, long before Biden took office, and includes convicted criminals who could be jailed outside ICE’s jurisdiction.
Trump has faced backlash for his rhetoric targeting undocumented immigrants since he started running for president in 2015. But his language has grown more dark and vilifying in his latest campaign.
Trump has said undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and even advocated for removing people from the country who are here legally, such as Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), have amplified false claims that immigrants are eating pets in the Ohio town.
Trump’s latest comment referring to “bad genes” takes his rhetoric toward immigrants a step further, playing into tropes that foreigners are genetically inferior to Americans and responsible for societal problems — such as violent crime — as a result.
Trump has previously broached the topic. In 2020, he praised a campaign rally crowd in predominantly White Minnesota for having “good genes.” He also touted the “racehorse theory,” the idea taken from horse-racing that people with superior qualities will pass those strengths on to their children.
“You have good genes, you know that, right?” Trump said. “You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it? Don’t you believe that? The racehorse theory — do you think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.”
Harris and Biden have repeatedly rebuked Trump over the language he has used to target immigrants, especially focusing on his allegation that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the nation. They have linked it to the ideology of Adolf Hitler, who argued in his manifesto “Main Kampf” that Jews were subjecting Germans to “blood poisoning.”
Trump has sought to distance himself from the connection, saying last year that he is “not a student of Hitler.”
Campaigning for Biden this year in South Carolina, Harris brought up Trump’s “poisoning the blood” comment and said, “For years, the former president has stoked the fires of hate and bigotry and racism and xenophobia for his own power and political gain.”