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Donald Trump claimed immigration, rather than the economy, is the top issue facing the US, despite all polling showing otherwise.
“I really believe that the border and the illegal immigration and 21 million people, many of them criminals, is a bigger thing than inflation,” Trump told voters in Atlanta during a Tuesday rally.
This claim comes despite several top polls, including recent surveys by Gallup and the Pew Research Center, indicating the economy is the No. 1 issue for voters.
“We don’t want them in this country,” he later added. “We’re getting them too fast. And I think it’s bigger than the economy.”
Several peer-reviewed studies have shown there is generally no evidence linking immigration to violent crime in the US, the Associated Press reports.
Trump began his speech around 9 pm, an hour-and-a-half after the event was slated to begin. For over an hour, music played, interrupted only when GOP Representative Byron Donalds gave a brief speech and when Trump took the stage.
Immigration was a key theme throughout his rambling speech, which also touched on recent hurricanes and Elon Musk, despite its promoted focus on the economy.
Economic issues rate No. 1 for voters in nearly all elections, and this year is no exception. A recent Gallup poll found 52 percent of voters rated the economy as “extremly imporant.” Roughly 41 percent said that immigration was extremly important, the fifth-highest rated issue for voters.
Still, Trump proclaimed that immigrants were the biggest issue, though he admitted he might be wrong. The former president also played a video during the rally, during which the narrator claimed that “13,000 illegal immigrants convicted of murder have been caught at the border and then released into the United States.”
Trump had already made this claim in recent weeks, adding that they entered the US under Vice President Kamala Harris.
This claim is based on newly released Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, which indicated 13,099 immigrants convicted of homicide were not detained by the agency. However, this does not mean they are not in the custody of any law enforcement agency, The Washington Post reports.
Because ICE detention centers have little space, many people convicted of violent crimes are sent to other facilities to serve out their sentences, according to the Post.
The data also does not specify when they entered the country, and a Department of Homeland Security statement clarified the numbers go back “decades,” the Post reports.
“The data in this letter is being misinterpreted,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on September 29, according to the Post. “The data goes back decades; it includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more, the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this administration.
“It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners,” the statement continued.
This event came a day after Trump spent most of his town hall in Philadelphia on Monday dancing to music after two attendees fell ill, putting the event on pause.
“Those two people who went down are patriots, and we love them,” Trump said to the crowd shortly before he left. “And because of them, we ended up with some good music, right?”