US Vice President Kamala Harris has criticised Republican Donald Trump 's promise to deport millions of people who are in the United States illegally, questioning whether he would rely on massive raids and detention camps to carry it out.
Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual leadership conference on Wednesday the nation can find both a pathway to citizenship for those who want to come and at the same time secure the border.
“We can do both, and we must do both,” she said.
Trump, for his part, leaned heavily on his alarmist message on immigration as he held a rally in Uniondale on New York's Long Island, focusing the bulk of his remarks on the subject.
“We’re just destroying the fabric of life in our country. And we’re not going to take it any longer. And you got to get rid of these people. Give me a shot," Trump said.
Both candidates took a break on Wednesday from campaigning in the toss-up states that will likely decide the November 5 election. The former president drew a large, roaring crowd, giving him a chance to show deep support even in a blue state.
He ripped into Democratic leadership in New York City and state, blaming them for homeless people living in what he called “horrible, disgusting, dangerous, filthy encampments,” and even the conditions on the New York City subway, which he called "squalid and unsafe” and promised to renovate.
“What the hell do you have to lose?" he said in asking for their votes.
Harris harked back to the Trump administration's immigration policies as she bid for Hispanic support.
“While we fight to move our nation forward to a brighter future, Donald Trump and his extremist allies will keep trying to pull us backward,” she said.
“We all remember what they did to tear families apart, and now they have pledged to carry out the largest deportation, a mass deportation, in American history.”
“Imagine what that would look like and what that would be? How’s that going to happen? Massive raids? Massive detention camps? What are they talking about?” she said.
Trump has promised to carry out “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” if he's elected in November. He has offered no details on how such an operation would work.
He has focused on immigration as a top campaign issue and made it a key focus of his remarks Wednesday.
“Look at what's happening,” he told his crowd.
"Businesses that are fleeing, money draining out of your state and hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants sucking your public resources dry.”
Trump said he plans in the next two weeks to visit Springfield, Ohio, that’s been the centre of false accusations from the former president and his running mate JD Vance that members of the city’s Haitian community are abducting and eating cats and dogs.
He has an advantage over Harris in opinion polling on whom voters trust to better handle the issue.
Meanwhile, the powerful Teamsters labour union declined to endorse either Harris or Trump, saying neither had sufficient support from its 1.3 million members.
