Clinton camp pounces on Donald Trump's immigration comments

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published 1 September 2016

On Thursday, Hillary Clinton's running mate Tim Kaine drew a comparison between Donald Trump's remarks on Mexican immigrants Wednesday night and discriminatory stances on Irish, Italian, and European Jewish immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. "Pretty much any group that's come into this country that has made our nation such a fantastic nation — they faced a few people who were saying bad things about them, who said 'no Irish need apply,'" said the Democratic vice presidential candidate. "That was the speech that Donald Trump gave last night."

Trump on Wednesday traveled to Mexico to meet with President Enrique Peña Nieto. The two appeared in a joint press conference, during which Trump said both men agreed each country should have the right to build a physical barrier on the border, but that paying for such a construction had not been discussed. Following their meeting, Peña Nieto claimed he had told Trump unequivocally that Mexico would not pay for such a wall — prompting Clinton to declare that Trump had "failed his first foreign test."

After leaving Mexico, Trump traveled to Arizona, where he outlined a 10-point immigration plan that included deporting millions of "criminal aliens," building an "impenetrable, tall, powerful, [and] beautiful" border wall, and issuing "detainers for illegal immigrants arrested for any crime whatsoever." Trump portrayed his plan as a path towards making "illegal immigration a memory of the past"; Kaine, however, described it as "a rampage with words of division, [basically] trashing people who are Mexican-American."