President Donald Trump is expected to attack President Joe Biden on Tuesday over his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border during a visit to Wisconsin and Michigan, key battleground states for the 2024 election.
Trump will first appear in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to give a speech about what his campaign calls “Biden’s border bloodshed.” He will then hold a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on the day of the state’s presidential primary.
Polls suggest Mr. Trump has an advantage over Mr. Biden on immigration, as many prospective voters worry that illegal border crossings will reach record highs.
In recent weeks, President Trump and other party members have been involved in several high-profile cases in which immigrants in the United States have been illegally charged with crimes, including the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, in which a Venezuelan man was charged. It was detected.
President Trump on Tuesday will discuss the murder of Ruby Garcia, a Michigan woman whose body was found on the side of a highway in Grand Rapids on March 22.
Police said she was romantically involved with suspect Brandon Ortiz Vito. The man told police he shot her multiple times during an argument, then left her body on the side of the road and drove off in his red Mazda.
Authorities said Ortiz-Vite is a Mexican national who had previously been arrested and deported for drunk driving. Court records do not list an attorney.
“Under crooked Joe Biden, every state is now a border state.” President Trump’s press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, said in a statement previewing the former president’s speech that Joe Biden He said every town is now a border town because they brought in carnage, chaos, and murder and threw it straight into our backyards.
Overall violent crime fell again in the U.S. last year, according to FBI statistics, continuing the downward trend after a pandemic-era surge.
Violent crime in Michigan hit a three-year low in 2022, according to the latest data available. Crime is also down in Detroit, Michigan’s largest city, with last year’s lowest number of homicides since 1966.
Riley’s family attended Trump’s rally in Georgia last month and met with him backstage, but it was unclear whether Garcia’s family would attend. Trump told conservative Michigan radio host Justin Barkley on Monday, “If her family wants to be there, I hope they’re happy to be there. That’s my honor.” asked to try.
Her sister took to Facebook last week to plead with reporters to stop politicizing her story.
The Biden campaign has accused Trump of playing a role in dismantling a bipartisan border agreement that added more than 1,500 new Customs and Border Protection agents, among other restrictions, and pre-empted the speech by calling on Trump to The president was also accused of similar behavior.
“Tomorrow, Donald Trump will be in Grand Rapids, once again politicizing tragedy and inciting hatred in order to hide his history of failing Michiganders,” said Alyssa Bradley, the Biden campaign’s Michigan communications director. It is expected that this will be an attempt to sow division.”
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said Monday that there are “real problems at our southern border” and that it is “critically important that Congress and the president fix them.”
“The solution was on the table. In fact, it was the former president who encouraged Republicans to back away from implementing it,” Whitmer said. “I have little tolerance for situations where political issues continue to endanger our economy and, in some ways, our people, as happened recently in Grand Rapids.”
Since becoming the party’s presumptive nominee, President Trump has leaned toward inflammatory statements about the record surge of migrants at the southern border.
He described immigrants as “poisoning the blood of the nation,” questioned whether they should be considered human beings, and claimed without evidence that countries were emptying prisons and psychiatric hospitals in the United States.
He also accused Biden of waging a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America,” and said Biden would “destroy the American system, override the will of real American voters, and create new policies that would give them control of elections.” “They are trying to establish a strong power base.” For generations. ”
Republicans in both states are in catch-up mode, as they appear to be systematically lagging far behind Democrats just six months before the first round of early voting for the general election.
Michigan Republican Party Chairman Pete Hoekstra told The Associated Press last week that the Trump campaign and its partners at the Republican National Committee have not yet made any major general election investments in the state and that no general election field staff has been deployed. He said he has not done so.
Michigan Republican lawmakers have also found themselves embroiled in controversy in recent weeks.
State Rep. Matthew Maddock falsely claimed that buses carrying college athletes to Detroit for March Madness were bringing illegal immigrant “infiltrators” into the city.
Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, Democrats touted their statewide organization, citing the 44 field offices they already operate in the state and more than 50 staff members.
The Trump campaign has not yet released the names of party leaders or organizers in Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin Republican Party has also come under fire in recent years, with the state Republican Party’s executive director resigning in March, months before the party’s national convention in Milwaukee.
Democrats are celebrating a series of victories, including the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s recent overturning of Republican-drawn congressional maps, which are expected to lead to Democratic victories.
This will be President Trump’s first visit to the state since 2022, when he held a rally to support gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels, who lost to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
The Trump campaign is trying to bounce back, saying it will open dozens of offices and hire hundreds of employees over the next 30 to 45 days.
___ Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writer Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.
