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In the past, Trump has often attracted attention for spreading half-truths or untruths. Now he may have spewed another lie.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — Donald Trump used his campaign rally in Michigan on Tuesday (April 2) to denounce what he called "Biden's bloodbath at the border," focusing on the case of a young woman killed by someone who, according to the immigration authorities, had entered the country illegally.
“She lit up this room, and I heard that from so many people,” Trump said at a news conference in the hometown of the 25-year-old victim, Ruby Garcia. “I spoke to some of her family members.”
But Garcia's sister, who serves as a family spokeswoman, said Tuesday that Trump and his campaign had not contacted her or other close relatives - and dismissed the GOP presidential nominee's efforts to make the case part of his calls for a tough crackdown to do at the border.
“It was always about illegal immigrants,” the victim’s sister, Mavi Garcia, told local news station
Target 8
. “Nobody really talks about it when Americans commit heinous crimes, and it's kind of shocking why they only talk about illegals. What about Americans who commit such heinous crimes?”
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Trump is putting immigration at the center of his election campaign: murder cases are part of his speeches
The Trump campaign had no comment Tuesday, and Trump did not mention that he spoke to Garcia's family at a rally in Wisconsin on Tuesday. Mavi Garcia confirmed to The
Washington Post
that Trump and his campaign have never spoken to the family.
Trump has put immigration at the center of his campaign for a second term, increasingly linking the issue to crime. At his rallies, he spoke at length about high-profile killings that police attributed to undocumented immigrants - Laken Riley in Georgia and now Garcia in Grand Rapids, a city in one of the most hotly contested districts in one of the few states that could decide the presidential race. The defendant in Garcia's case, 25-year-old Brandon Ortiz-Vite, had a previous criminal record and was deported under the Trump administration in September 2020 before finding his way back to the United States.
Democrats stressed that undocumented immigrants do not commit more crimes than legal residents - and portrayed Garcia's case in Michigan as an example of the dangers of domestic violence. According to authorities, the defendant was with Ruby Garcia when he hit her on March 22 March fatally shot and left lying on the side of the road.
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Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Tuesday evening. © Joshua Lott/The Washington Post
“He hasn’t spoken to any of us”: Trump is probably lying about contact with the family of the woman who was killed
Garcia's family members stayed out of the political firestorm surrounding her death in the days before Trump's event, limiting their public comments to memorials. But Mavi Garcia spoke in more detail Tuesday after calling Trump's comments "shocking."
"He hasn't spoken to any of us, so it was kind of shocking to see him saying he spoke to us and misinforming people on TV," she told Target 8. She said she wished Ortiz- Vite would have “stayed in Mexico,” but that “the focus now should be on my sister, who she was in life.”
Ortiz-Vite is charged with murder and other offenses. In contrast, family members of Riley, the young woman killed in Georgia, have embraced Trump. Riley's parents met with Trump last month before he took the stage for a rally in Rome, Georgia, and Riley's mother criticized Biden for not using her daughter's name in his State of the Union address.
Trump uses deaths for election campaign purposes: “Illegal foreign animals”
Authorities say Riley, a nursing student, was killed by Jose Ibarra, a man from Venezuela who entered the United States illegally in 2022. Ibarra is charged with murder.
Trump sought to highlight both Garcia's and Riley's cases at his event Tuesday in Grand Rapids, where he met with members of law enforcement and then spoke about immigration. A graphic shown on a large screen highlighted the increase in border crossings in the South since Biden took office. Trump repeated his promise to restrict immigration of undocumented people and carry out mass deportations.
Riley was “barbarically murdered by an illegal foreign animal,” Trump said Tuesday. "The Democrats say, 'Please don't call them animals, call them people.' I said, 'No, they're not people. ...They are animals.' Nancy Pelosi told me that. She said, 'Please don't use the word animals when talking about these people.' I said, 'I'm going to use the word animal because that's what they are.'"
After Biden's campaign highlighted the reference to "animals," Trump's campaign sought clarification, suggesting in a social media post that "animals" refers to people who commit murder.
Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.
About the author
Hannah Knowles
is a national politics reporter at The Washington Post covering campaigns. She previously reported for the Post's general division.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on April 3, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.