Before Donald Trump had even taken the stage Friday, venomous anti-immigrant sentiment ran wild at the Republican presidential nominee’s campaign rally in Aurora, Colorado.
Trump has falsely and repeatedly claimed that Tren de Aguas, a Venezuelan gang, had taken over an apartment building in Aurora. In reality, the police said there was no evidence it had been taken over, and residents claimed it had been left destitute by a predatory management company.
Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller and Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert helped open the event, spewing vitriolic anti-immigrant messages in front of a backdrop that read, “DEPORT ILLEGALS NOW” and “END MIGRANT CRIME.”
Miller, the ghoulish white nationalist behind the Trump administration’s most hard-line immigration policies, went on a racist tirade about undocumented immigrants.
“Look at all of these photos around me. Are these the kids you grew up with? Are these the neighbors you were raised with?” Miller asked the crowd.
While Miller was specifically gesturing to two large photographs of Jose Miguel Reyes-Perez and Juan Carlos Mejia-Espana, who have been identified as undocumented members of Tren de Aguas, his rhetoric echoed the “great replacement theory,” which laments the changing demographics of the U.S. through immigration.
The crowd replied with an enthusiastic “No!” to Miller’s blatant race-baiting.
“Are these the neighbors that you want, in your city?” Miller continued. “No, these are the criminal migrants that Kamala Harris brought into your community. And as swiftly as they came, Donald Trump will send. Them. Back.”
Miller has previously endorsed a theory called “ remigration ” which, unlike deportation, refers to the forcible removal of non–ethnically European immigrants and their families, regardless of their actual citizenship.
Boebert, for her part, was quick to double down on her own racist fearmongering. Last month, she spread more anti-immigrant misinformation about Aurora, claiming that she and other lawmakers had “confirmed” reports that members of Tren de Aguas had committed “human trafficking and sexual abuse of minors” at another apartment building in the area.
However, as Kyle Clark of Next9 News pointed out, claims of sexual abuse of minors were seemingly new and unconnected to any recent arrests in the area. Clark exposed that the report Boebert was referring to had relied on a “third-hand anonymous claim” to make that allegation.
It seems, a month later, Boebert was still pretty upset about the brutal fact-check.
“In Colorado, we don’t need Kyle Clark and 9News to tell us what’s happening in our own backyard,” Boebert said as the crowd booed wildly.
“Our backyard is looking like an episode of Narcos !” she shouted, as the crowd fell silent at the lame joke.
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