“Trump separated mothers from their children,” reads a frame of a new advertisement from President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. It highlights some of former President Donald Trump’s most inflammatory comments about immigration into the U.S.
According to a report from Axios, this ad is intended to “remind Latino voters of President Trump’s family separation policy at the border,” a policy that resulted in approximately 4,000 children being taken from their parents.
While Hispanic voters have historically voted for Democrat candidates, per Gallup polling, their support for the party isn’t a given. Earlier this year, a New York Times/Siena College poll even found that Trump was polling higher than Biden among Hispanic voters at 46% to 40% and that 57% of Hispanic voters believed the country was moving in the wrong direction. A more recent poll from USA Today and Suffolk University found that support for Biden was stronger among Hispanics, with 34% saying they would vote for the current president and just 28% saying they would vote for Trump.
However, USA Today noted that Biden’s lead over Trump isn’t as strong as it was in 2020.
In the new advertisement, Trump can be heard saying “they’re not people, in my opinion – these are animals,” and claiming that immigrants are bringing drugs and crime into the country. Axios reported that border authorities had 1.3 million encounters with immigrants from October of last year.
At the same time, violent crime has decreased in the country.
Last week, the White House announced that “an independent organization of police chiefs from the nation’s largest cities released data showing that, compared to a year earlier, violent crime declined across every category in the first quarter of 2024 and murders are down 17%.”
With the new ad, called “Ripped Apart,” the Biden campaign hopes to “puncture nostalgia for Trump’s four years in office,” Axios said. In 2018, news coverage of families being separated turned public opinion against Trump, the outlet added. He even reversed course in the wake of criticism.
Trump quotes included in the advertisement include one claiming that immigrants are “destroying our country,” and his plans to enact the “largest deportation operation in American history,” if he is elected for a second term.
In addition to featuring comments from Trump, Biden’s new ad mentions actions his administration has taken to improve immigration policies. These include the Family Reunification Task Force project. Last week, the Biden-Harris Administration also expanded affordable, quality health care coverage to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients.
Yet, as political pressure weighs on the president while he seeks a second term, he has also considered an executive order to limit crossings at the Southern border, per Axios.
“We all remember the horrific images of babies being ripped from their mother’s arms as a result of Trump’s family separation policy,” said Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez in an X post this week. “Let’s organize like hell to make sure he never sets foot in the Oval Office again!”
She also said, in a stamen shared by Axios: “If Trump is re-elected, the chaos and cruelty we saw in his first term is the floor: he'll go even further to attack and demonize immigrants, while doing nothing to address the real issues plaguing our broken immigration system.”
From the other camp, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that a “reversal of President Trump's immigration policies has created an unprecedented immigration, humanitarian, and national security crisis on our southern border and has led to [the] highest rates of human trafficking on record.”
Trump has been active on social media lately, but mostly to discuss his ongoing “hush money” case in New York City. In one post related to border security, he shared a photo of alligators on Truth Social.
“RECOMMENDED SECURITY FOR OUR SOUTHERN BORDER,” said the caption. “GUARANTEED TO WORK!”
Biden took to social media to share the new ad and said this in a Tuesday X post: “Donald Trump ripped innocent children away from their mothers – and if he wins the White House again, he’ll do worse. We must stop Donald Trump.”
Pew Research Center data indicates that “Latinos have grown at the second-fastest rate of any major racial and ethnic group in the U.S. electorate since the last presidential election,” and that they will make up nearly 15% of voters in 2024.