Trump: Immigrants Have Brought ‘Bad Genes’ Into The Country

During an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday, Donald Trump said immigrants were filling the country with “bad genes” and used lies about decades-old crime statistics to make his point.

Trump has long been obsessed with the idea that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America —echoing Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric. For years, he has lied that other countries are purposefully sending criminals to the United States.

As part of his recent weekslong racist smear campaign, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), falsely said Haitian immigrants had raised the infectious disease rate in Springfield, Ohio. And Trump has been touting his mass deportation agenda, which he says he’ll enact as soon as he’s in office.

“How about allowing people to come through an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers?” Trump told Hewitt, referring to the Biden administration. “Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States. You know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They left, they had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn’t be here that are criminals.”

The xenophobic claim that immigrants are genetically predisposed to committing violent crimes is shocking and false — but xenophobia is also a cornerstone of Trump’s presidential campaign.

Trump’s numbers are based on heavily manipulated statistics about the criminal conviction records of people with cases in immigration court — cases that span several decades, some long before President Joe Biden was in office, and which include people currently serving prison time.

The full transcript of Trump’s remarks