Former President Donald Trump asserted Wednesday that people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border are bringing contagious disease with them.
“They’re coming in as terrorists. Many, many terrorists are coming in, and people are coming in with very contagious disease,” Trump said Wednesday evening during his interview with New York radio station WABC.
“You know, like it’s all of a sudden you see there’s a run on tuberculosis. There’s a run on things that we haven’t talked about for years in this country,” Trump added.
Trump made similar claims in a September interview with The National Pulse about disease being brought in through the Southern border when he said that illegal immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
“It is a very sad thing for our country. It’s poisoning the blood of our country. It’s so bad and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with — with every possible thing that you can have,” Trump said in December at a rally in New Hampshire.
In Wednesday’s interview, Trump once again alleged that people crossing the border and coming into the U.S. are speaking unfamiliar and unknown languages.
“We have no idea who they are, where they come from,” Trump said. “We have no idea. They speak languages we don’t even know about. We have people with languages that we know nothing about. It’s crazy,” Trump continued.
Much of Trump’s violent rhetoric about an out-of-control Southern border is routine rally material for him, with the former president repeatedly claiming that people crossing the border are from “mental institutions” and “insane asylums.”
Trump frequently references the increased migration from South and Central American countries, vowing to impose stricter border regulations. Last Saturday, while speaking at the NRA’s annual convention, Trump said if he were the leader of a South American country, he would send over criminals and prisoners to America “faster than them.”
“The ones in South America that are sending all of their criminals and their prisoners and their gangs into our country — intelligently,” Trump said. “I’d do the same thing if I was there. I’d do the same. I’d do it faster than them,” he said.
While vowing to bolster and work closely with local law enforcement in border communities, Trump has remained vague on specific policy he’d utilize to reinforce border security. This hasn’t halted Trump’s sharp criticism of Biden’s handling of the border — a main point of attack for Trump ads and fundraising emails.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
