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Trump leans in on immigration, crime during campaign stop in Richmond

Charlie Paulen/The Virginia Mercury | 3/7/2024, 6 p.m.
Former President Donald Trump made a campaign stop in Richmond on Saturday ahead of Super Tuesday, a day of primary …
Donald Trump made a campaign stop in Richmond on March 2 at the Greater Richmond Convention Center ahead of Virginia’s presidential primary, taking his aim at the November election and President Biden. The rally marked Trump’s second stop after speaking in North Carolina earlier in the day. The former president vowed to “make a big play for Virginia” come November. Photos by Brian Palmer/Richmond Free Press

Former President Donald Trump made a campaign stop in Richmond on Saturday ahead of Super Tuesday, a day of primary voting that is expected to seal his bid to be the Republican nominee for president in November.

“With your help, we will win big on Super Tuesday,” Mr. Trump told the crowd of a few thousand at the Richmond Convention Center. “This November, Virginia is going to tell crooked Joe Biden, you’re fired, you’re fired, get out of here, get out of the White House.”

Calling himself a “political dissident” Saturday evening, Mr. Trump’s speech in Richmond largely focused on immigration and crime. He specifically cited the recent death of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old University of Georgia nursing student whom authorities say was beaten to death by a Venezuelan migrant, and the shooting death of a 2-year-old in Montgomery County, Md. Law enforcement has arrested five suspects in the latter case, one of whom is a Salvador national who was slated for deportation last year but was later released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“We now have a new category of crime, you know what it’s called? It’s called migrant crime. And this category is turning out to be worse than any crime we’ve ever had in our country,” Mr. Trump said. “I was going to call it Biden migrant crime. But if you do that it’s too long. It doesn’t work.”

Mr. Trump pledged that if elected, he would “terminate every open border policy of the Biden administration” on his first day in office.

“We will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” he said. “We have no choice. This is not sustainable by any country.”

Immigration, he warned the audience, was also affecting schools: “In New York, they have pupils from foreign countries, from countries where they don’t even know what the language is. We have nobody that even teaches it,” Mr. Trump said. “These are languages that nobody ever heard of. They’re sitting in the school chairs of people, of kids, that were there, and those kids aren’t able to go to school any longer. There’s no place they can go. They’re taking the school, and they don’t speak a word of English.”

Richmond resident Joe Wilson, 27, who said he attended the rally not to support Trump but to witness the movement behind him, said “it’s kind of fascinating the amount of pandemonium he can cause. I just can’t wrap my head around it.”

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