Former President Donald Trump leaned into his hard-line immigration stance during a Latino roundtable discussion in Florida on Tuesday, underscoring his strategy of winning the 2024 election on border security.
Trump identified illegal immigration as the top issue two weeks out from Election Day, and several of the speakers in attendance highlighted its importance to them as well.
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“Mr. President, it’s a misnomer that Latinos want open borders,” one woman said during the hourlong discussion. “We want a secure border, like all Americans.”
Another speaker, film producer Eduardo Verástegui, brought up the 320,000 migrant children the Biden-Harris administration has reportedly lost track of, asking aloud, “Kamala [Harris], where are the children?”
“I wanted to make a movie about this because the first step to eradicate child trafficking is to raise awareness,” said Verástegui, producer of the 2023 movie Sound of Freedom. “If you don’t know that this problem exists, how you can fix it? So I made a promise to God that I will dedicate my entire life to end child trafficking.”
Trump agreed, saying, “The biggest thing [in this election] is the border because the border is destroying our country,” a remark that drew lots of applause from the friendly audience.
Elsewhere, Trump took his now-familiar potshots at electric vehicle mandates, green energy, and Harris, drawing laughter from the crowd.
“She’s slow, low IQ or something,” Trump said. “I don’t know what the hell it is. But they lie. We don’t need another low-IQ person [in the White House]. We had one for four years. We don’t need another one.”
He also criticized Harris as “lazy as hell” for not holding any campaign stops Tuesday, though she is taping two television interviews, and he speculated that she still has low name recognition despite being the Democratic presidential nominee since July.
The Harris campaign released a statement ahead of the event, knocking Trump’s record with Latinos.
“Trump has a track record of attacking Latinos, and his Project 2025 agenda goes far beyond attacking us with just rhetoric,” Harris spokesman Marco Frieri said. “It could cost our families and small businesses thousands of dollars a year if he were reelected.”
Frieri charged that Trump would ax affordable health insurance coverage, raise taxes, and cause inflation in a second White House term.
“During his presidency, Trump rigged the economy in favor of the billionaires, leaving Latino families in Florida and across America behind,” he said. “Another Trump administration would be an economic disaster for our community.”
Harris is participating in a Telemundo interview Tuesday afternoon that her campaign says will reach 95% of Latino households. She released an economic plan for Latino men on Monday, pledging to “equip Latino men with more tools and opportunities to reach their aspirations and provide for themselves and their families.”
Polling has been split on how Trump and Harris are faring with Hispanic voters. A USA Today-Suffolk University poll found that Latinos now favor Trump 49% to 38%, while a GQR poll found Harris leading among Hispanics in battleground states 64% to 31%.
But polling has also found that Latinos have been shifting toward Trump’s stance on immigration, including Latinos who identify as Democrats.
The economy was another topic that Trump and the speakers at his event, held in the Miami area, touched on, saying how immigration harmed Hispanics and how his economy would be better for them.
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But immigration seemed to take top billing throughout the panel, with a lot of focus on crime committed by illegal immigrants and on drugs and sex trafficking facilitated by an unsecured border.
“Kamala Harris was charged with looking for the root cause of trafficking and the border problem,” a man said near the end. “You know how she could find it? Look in the mirror.”
