Trump, Harris trade barbs on crime during first presidential debate: 'Through the roof'

Former President Donald Trump and VP Kamala Harris traded blows on the issue of crime in the United States in the first presidential debate, with Harris defending accusations that migrant crime has increased under her watch by citing Trump's legal issues.

"Yeah, it is much higher because of them," Trump said during the debate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania discussing crime committed by illegal immigrants in the U.S., some of which entered the country under Biden's watch.

"They allowed criminals, many, many millions of criminals," Trump continued, "They allowed terrorists. They allowed common street criminals. They allowed people to come in drug dealers to come into our country. And then now in the United States and told by their countries like Venezuela, don't ever come back or we're going to kill you. Do you know that crime in Venezuela and crime in countries all over the world is way down?"

Trump continued, "Crime here is up and through the roof. Despite their fraudulent statements that they made. Crime in this country is through the roof. And we have a new form of crime. It's called migrant crime. And it's happening at levels that nobody thought possible."

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ABC's David Muir then interjected and said that "the FBI says overall violent crime is actually coming down in this country" without noting that those statistics are down from historic highs or that several large cities did not include their data.

"They were defrauding statements," Trump responded. "They they didn't include the worst cities. They didn't include the cities with the worst crime. It was a fraud. Just like their number of 818,000 jobs that they said they created