Former President Donald Trump named the border crisis as the “single-biggest problem” America is facing after nearly four years under the Biden-Harris administration.
“I really think that the biggest problem this country has is what they’ve allowed to happen to us on the border,” Trump said at a “Latino Roundtable” in Doral, Florida, on Tuesday. “They’ve allowed our country to be destroyed. They’re allowing thousands of murderers and drug dealers and terrorists and people from mental institutions.”
The Republican nominee said that while inflation is a “country destroyer” and “country buster,” illegal immigration is a larger concern. He said countries like the Congo are emptying their jails into America.
“I think it’s the single biggest problem, because our country is loaded up right now with murderers and with people and seriously ill people from mental institutions,” Trump said, “and those mental institutions are empty, and those jails are becoming empty.”
While many on the Left suggest that Latinos support an open border, polls reveal the opposite. The majority of Hispanics, 75%, view the open border as a major problem or a crisis. Most of them also disapprove of how the government has handled the border crisis, according to a Pew Research poll.
Vice President Kamala Harris leads Trump with Hispanic voters by 14 percentage points, according to the most recent NBC/Telemundo poll. That is the smallest margin for a Democrat in over a decade.
In the border state of Arizona, Trump is winning the Hispanic vote.
At the Latino roundtable, Trump referenced the 325,000 missing migrant children under the Biden-Harris administration.
“I think if it were on the other side, it would be one of the great scandals in history,” Trump said. “It’s actually 325,000 children are missing, sex slaves, or dead.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General released a report at the end of August saying that the Biden-Harris administration has lost track of approximately 300,000 migrant children. Between fiscal year 2019 and 2023, more than 32,000 of the unaccompanied children who had crossed the border illegally failed to appear in court after receiving a Notice to Appear. The report also found that as of May 2024, DHS had not served notices to appear to more than 291,000 unaccompanied children.
The former president criticized Harris’ management of the border as “border czar.”
“She never once called the Border Patrol,” Trump said. “The Border Patrol, by the way, five days ago, endorsed me, which is something they’re not even really supposed to do. And in endorsing me, they gave it a full-throated endorsement, but in endorsing me they said how horrible she is, and it’s not easy for them to say that.”
The National Border Patrol Council, the union representing Border Patrol agents, endorsed Trump last week.
Instead of fixing the border crisis, Trump said all the Biden-Harris administration thinks about is “transgender operations” and “men in women’s sports.”
“I’ve never met a person that came up to me, and they say we want men to play in women’s sports,” Trump said. “Somehow, they’re pushing it. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve been talking about this for a while, because I’m ending it. On Day One, I’m ending it.”
Nearly three-quarters of registered voters agree with Trump that biological males should not be allowed to participate in women’s and girls sports.
“There’s a sickness going on in our country,” Trump said. “We have to end the sickness.”
