During a rally in Aurora, Colorado on Friday, Donald Trump vowed to invoke a 1798 law that grants the president the ability to enact a mass deportation scheme.
“We will have an Operation Aurora at the federal level to expedite the removal of these savage gangs. And I will invoke the Aliens Enemies Act of 1798, think of that,” Trump told the crowd, during a night centered around the specter of "migrant crime."
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The Alien and Sedition Acts grant widespread powers to the president during wartime and were famously used to justify the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War 2.
The theme of migrants and mass deportation ran throughout Trump's speech. He said that immigrants to the United States are "the worst criminals in the world" and "the most violent people on Earth." Later in his speech, he said that Haitian-American immigrants in Springfield would have to be deported to Haiti in spite of their legal status.
"They have to go back to where they came from," he said.
Trump added that he’d send in ICE and Border Patrol squads, and promise local police officers blanket immunity to enact the plan to remove 20 million people which he previously warned would be a “bloody story.”
“They’ve [local cops] been restricted from operating,” Trump said. “We’re going to indemnify them against any prosecutions.”
Trump previously claimed that the city of Aurora was home to dangerous gangs who had taken over an apartment complex.Local officials spoke out against Trump’s rhetoric that Aurora was a “war zone.”
“Aurora is a considerably safe city — not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs,” Republican mayor Mike Coffman told the New York Times.
Trump was not swayed.
“We have to live with these animals, but we’re not gonna live with them for long, you watch,” Trump said at the rally, adding that he was confident he could win the historically blue state. “I am going to make Colorado safe again.”
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