Trumps Is Now Threatening All Immigrants, “Illegal” or Not

Donald Trump has taken yet another page out of the fascist handbook and decided that immigrants in the United States with legal status aren’t actually legal.

During an interview Tuesday night on Newsmax, Trump said he didn’t care about what legal processes the Haitian immigrants of Springfield, Ohio, had gone through. They’re still “illegal” to him.

“I mean, look at Springfield where 30,000 illegal immigrants are dropped, and it was—they may have done it through a certain little trick, but they are illegal immigrants as far as I’m concerned. They’re destroying the towns, they’re destroying the whole—they’ll end up destroying the state!” he ranted .

The Haitian immigrants in Springfield are in the country under temporary protected status, which Trump has already pledged to revoke if he is put into office. The Republican presidential nominee’s reckless disregard for legal processes isn’t surprising, but it is alarming, as it widens the field of whom he hopes to displace in his plan to carry out the largest mass deportations in U.S. history. Whether you’re in the country legally or not legally depends entirely on whether you’re a convenient scapegoat for the former president.

Vice presidential nominee JD Vance has also stated that he doesn’t care about the legal status of immigrants. “Well, if Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally, and says these people are now here legally, I’m still going to call them an illegal alien,” Vance said during a campaign event in North Carolina last month. “An illegal action from Kamala Harris does not make an alien legal. That is not how this works.”

Trump has been not-so-subtly increasing the number of Haitian immigrants in Springfield every time he mentions it. In reality, there are between 10,000 and 12,000 Haitian immigrants in Springfield, according to CNN. Using fake numbers, and even faker stories , Trump has repeatedly exaggerated the supposed negative effect of immigrant communities on American cities.