President Donald Trump said Monday that illegal immigration is “overwhelming” New York City, referencing the brutal rape of a 46-year-old woman in Coney Island on Sunday and slamming Vice President Kamala Harris’ performance as President Biden’s “border czar.”
The former president slammed Harris, who faces him in the Nov. 5 election, as a “third-rate fake candidate” and cited crime in New York linked to people illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border at a time when Harris was nominated by Biden to reduce border crossings.
“We saw it today in New York, somebody got stabbed, the girlfriend of a guy who was watching at one of the shelters in New York got raped and he started pulling out a knife. Bad things are happening today, but this happens every day,” President Trump told Elon Musk during a livestreamed X-Space conversation.
“We’re already overwhelmed. Elon, we’re overwhelmed. You saw the news tonight about New York. New York, I love that city. It’s terrible what they’re doing to New York. What they’re doing to New York and what the courts are doing is just focusing on Trump.”
Trump spoke out about his home state in the wake of two major immigration-related crimes: a stabbing Sunday morning at the Randalls Island immigration center and a brutal rape Sunday evening by two immigrant men, one of whom had been released in June after allegedly sexually assaulting another woman at a city shelter.
Daniel Davon Bonilla, 24, of Nicaragua, is accused of raping the victim at about 9pm on Sunday at a knife-holder under the Riegelman Boardwalk. His alleged accomplice, Leovando Moreno, 37, of Mexico, is accused of hitting the victim with a pipe to prevent her 34-year-old boyfriend from intervening.
Davon Bonilla entered the country illegally through Eagle Pass, Texas, on Dec. 7, 2022, sources told The Washington Post. He was apparently released under a Biden-Harris administration policy that allows migrants to wait in the U.S. for the outcome of their backlogged asylum proceedings and, in the meantime, have the right to obtain a work permit.
Four months after arriving in the country, Davon Bonilla was arrested for assaulting a woman by pulling her hair and holding her down at a Brooklyn hotel that had been converted into a migrant shelter. He was released in June after taking a plea deal.
“They’re criminals who make our criminals look like good people, and what they did is terrible. And she’s the one taking responsibility for that, because now she’s trying to say she had nothing to do with it,” Trump told Musk.
“She’s a liar. On her first day she was called ‘Empress of the Borders’ and every newspaper headline said ‘She’s Empress of the Borders’ but she has never been there. She has just been to places that have nothing to do with the place in question.”
Trump added: “She’s the border czar and the public shouldn’t be allowed to get away with a disinformation campaign. She’s trying now to say she wasn’t actually involved, but this whole thing is terrible. She was totally responsible.”
Trump criticized Biden, 81, saying, “She could have closed the border without Biden. He didn’t know what he was doing, he wouldn’t even know what happened. If we closed the border, he wouldn’t even know the difference.”
Trump also accused Harris of shying away from the press since Biden recommended her as his successor on July 21, when he gave up his bid for a second term due to a backlash within the Democratic Party over his own intellectual ability.
“She has not given a single interview since this scam began,” he exclaimed, after calling her “incompetent.”
Biden tapped Harris in March 2021 to work with leaders of Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala to address the “root causes” of illegal migration.
Harris was widely known as the country’s “border minister” but during the first three years of her tenure illegal border crossings continued to break records.
By fiscal year 2024, which ends Sept. 30, officials Immigrants: 1,821,652 As of June 30, the number of migrants along the southern border was 1,789,492, up from figures for the same period in fiscal year 2023 but beginning to trend downward.
In fiscal year 2023, a record high of about 2.5 million people were arrested for illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as an estimated 670,000 “fugitives” who evaded arrest. The number of detainees in fiscal year 2022 is a record high of about 2.4 million, up from 1.7 million in fiscal year 2021.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in January that 85% of immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally were being released to await adjudication after Biden ended Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required most asylum seekers to await adjudication in another country.
“Kamala and Joe, you know what happened? They just let it go. I had a ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy. I had a variety of very good policies,” Trump told Musk.
“She says we’ve been strong on the border and we’re going to be strong. Well, she doesn’t need to say that. We could close the border right now.”
Harris’ campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, then a White House staffer, clashed with New York City Mayor Eric Adams last year when she tried to warn Democrats that record levels of illegal immigration risk alienating Black and Hispanic Americans, sparking a public disagreement between the White House and City Hall over the issue.
