It was a dark vision he sketched out on stage: one of invasion and conquest, criminals and murderers.
Former President Donald Trump has long campaigned on the fears of unbridled immigration, and in Aurora, Colorado, this month, he reprised those themes, outlining his plan for the “largest deportation operation in the history of the United States”.
“We will close the border,” he told a cheering crowd. “We will stop the invasion of illegals into our country. We will defend our territory. We will not be conquered.”
In another speech in Wisconsin, Trump said undocumented immigrants would enter your home and “cut your throat”.
But as the presidential race heats up between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, some experts have noted that parties, both liberal and conservative, are shifting rightward on immigration — reflecting a global trend.
As Trump leans into nativist attacks on immigrants, Harris has responded with her own pledges for more restrictions, even at the expense of internationally recognised asylum rights.
“As vice president, she backed the toughest border control bill in decades, and as president, she will hire thousands more border agents,” one of her campaign ads says.
Experts and rights groups say that the tough talk on immigration is an indication of the growing mainstream influence of the far right, both in the US and abroad.
“There’s this spectre of being overrun by ‘the other’ that has always been there,” Petra Molnar, a lawyer and anthropologist specialising in migration and human rights, told Al Jazeera.
“But it’s no longer being expressed just by the far-right. It seems to have filtered into the entire conversation around immigration.”