By Megan Lebowitz -
NBC News
WASHINGTON — The Biden campaign and a super PAC supporting Trump have launched competing ads on immigration that paint very different pictures of an issue that is expected to affect voter turnout in November.
Biden's ad focuses heavily on Latin Americans, but also goes against former President Donald Trump and his rhetoric.
"Now he says immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country," Biden says in the 30-second ad, which appears to use his remarks from a campaign event this week in Phoenix.
"What the hell was she talking about?"
The ad is the second focused on Latinos this week, the Biden campaign said.
It will be broadcast on digital platforms in English and Spanish in more than half a dozen contested states.
["I need them back": Biden recognizes that he has lost support from Latinos and asks for their vote from Arizona]
"Let's call Trump's words and actions what they are: anti-Latina, anti-immigrant and anti-American," Biden campaign Hispanic media director Maca Casado said in a statement.
In a 15-second ad released by the pro-Trump super PAC called MAGA Inc, audio of Biden criticizing the border wall plays over a video of migrants pushing through part of a border fence.
"Not another foot of wall will be built during my administration," Biden says in the ad.
It appears to be the same line Biden told NPR before winning the 2020 election.
"The daily chaos at the border is the fault of one man: Joe Biden," MAGA Inc. spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer said in a statement.
"Biden reversed Trump policies that stopped illegal immigration."
The ad, which Trump posted on his Truth Social account with the words "Biden's Invasion," was not in response to Biden's, said Pfeiffer, who declined to advance the PAC's subsequent plans for the ad.
[Hispanic evangelicals are "more involved" in the elections: their support for Christian nationalism is worrying]
The two ads highlight a critical issue for campaigns.
About 28% of Americans named immigration as the most important issue facing the United States, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February.
Trump led Biden by 35 points when voters were asked which candidate would be better at securing the border and controlling immigration, according to an NBC News poll conducted in January.
However, Biden led Trump by 17 points when voters were asked which candidate would treat immigrants better and protect their rights.
Biden's campaign has frequently criticized Trump's comments about immigrants, whom the former president has compared to the character Hannibal Lecter from
The Silence of the Lambs
.
Biden's new ad also shows a 2015 clip of Trump announcing his presidential bid and referring to Mexican migrants, saying, "They bring drugs. They bring crime. They are rapists."
The announcements are not the first time the two candidates have faced off over immigration issues on the same day.
In a split-screen moment last month, Biden and Trump visited the southern border and spoke at the same time in different locations.
During the visit, Biden asked Trump to support him in passing a bipartisan border bill that was negotiated in the Senate but was later rejected by Republicans after criticism from Trump.
Meanwhile, Trump called the situation at the border a "Joe Biden invasion."