At Aurora Rally, Trump Vows to Use 'Elite Squads' to Conduct Mass Deportation Raids

After much anticipation, Former President Donald Trump visited Aurora, Colorado, on Friday, focusing on immigration as a central issue for his campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris. Addressing a crowd of thousands, Trump portrayed migrants as a significant threat to American communities and criticized the Biden administration's immigration policies.

"They come from the dungeons of the third world ... and she (Harris) has had them resettled beautiful into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens."

Aurora, a city of about 400,000, gained national attention after Trump amplified stories of gang activity involving the Venezuelan group Tren de Aragua. Although local officials, including the city's Republican mayor, have rejected claims that Aurora is overrun by migrants, Trump emphasized what he described as rising dangers linked to immigration.

"They brought in 32,000 people into a community of 50 (thousand), a community that was a nice community," he elaborated. "And now if you want to go to the hospital you can't get in, your children can't get into school." He then added that illegal migrants "have to go back to where they came from."

Later on in the rally, Trump announced "Operation Aurora," a plan to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to target and deport undocumented migrants involved in gang activities. To achieve that, he pledged that "elite squads" from federal agencies like Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would actively pursue and remove such individuals from the U.S. through raids:

At another point in his speech, Trump referred to undocumented immigrants as "rapists", a term he's been using on and off since back in 2015 when announcing his first presidential candidacy.

Colorado has not backed a Republican presidential candidate since 2004, and Trump is not likely to win the state in November as polls show Harris with a commanding lead.