Donald Trump takes a detour from the battleground states on Friday to visit a Colorado suburb in the news for illegal immigration, spreading the message that migrants are causing chaos in smaller American cities and towns, often using false or misleading statements makes claims.

Trump’s rally in Aurora will take place for the first time the election in November that one of the two presidential campaigns visited Colorado, where Democrats are reliably elected nationwide.

The Republican candidate has long vowed to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history and has made immigration a central part of his political persona since the day he launched his first campaign in 2015. In recent months, Trump has identified certain smaller communities that have experienced large influxes of migrants, local tensions over resources, and some longtime residents expressing distrust of sudden demographic changes.

Aurora stepped into the spotlight In August, a video circulated showing armed men walking through an apartment building housing Venezuelan migrants. However, Trump has made extensive claims that Venezuelan gangs are taking over buildings Authorities say it was a single block of the suburb, and the area is safe again.

Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, have done the same Spreading falsehoods about a community in Springfield, Ohio, where Haitian immigrants were accused of stealing and eating pets.

“It’s like an invasion from within, and we’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country, and we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora,” Trump said at a news conference in California last month.

While Ohio and Colorado are uncompetitive in the presidential race, the Republican message on immigration is aimed at states that are competitive. Vance recently campaigned in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, a city of 70,000 that has resettled refugees from Africa and Asia, and announced Trump’s plan to increase deportations. He argues that smaller communities have been “overrun” by immigrants who tax local resources.

Trump has vowed not to deport just “criminals,” a promise he shares with the vice president Kamala Harrishis Democratic rival, but also Haitians live legally in Springfield and even people he denigrated as “pro-Hamas radicals.” Protests on university campuses. Trump has said he will revoke temporary protected status that allows Haitians to stay in the United States because of widespread poverty and violence in their home country.

Trump has repeatedly accused Harris and President Joe Biden of allowing record-breaking numbers of arrivals, saying it is fueling violent crime, even as the numbers show a continued downward trend following a spike in crime during the coronavirus pandemic.

During the election campaign, Trump uses specific cases of murders or attacks in which the suspects are immigrants who came to the country illegally. He has referred to them as “animals” and earlier this week he suggested they were people suspected in murder cases “have bad genes.”

Chris Haynes, an associate professor of political science at the University of New Haven who wrote a book about public opinion on immigration policy and examined the former president’s messaging on immigration, says this is part of what he calls “episodic branding.” It could cause some moderate voters to rethink who they want to support, he said.

“What worked for him from the beginning was to denigrate immigrants but also try to make people feel like they were a threat,” Haynes said, saying some of the rhetoric also appealed to low-propensity voters. which are part of his base.

Harris, for her part, ended a three-day Western swing with a campaign rally Friday in Scottsdale, Arizona. She also virtually participated in a White House briefing with President Biden about recovery efforts from Hurricanes Milton and Helene.

Just like Biden before he gave up his re-election bid, Harris, a Democrat, has swung to the right on immigration and presented herself as a candidate It can be difficult to police the borderwhich is considered one of their biggest weaknesses.

“What Kamala did to illegal migrants is the biggest crime story of our time, because hundreds of thousands of people will soon be victims,” Trump said in a recent speech in Erie, Pennsylvania, before announcing he would send federal law enforcement “to every city in Pennsylvania and every city in the United States of America that has been taken over by migrant gangs.”

Jeffrey Balogh, an Erie resident, said at the event that Trump’s immigration proposals are close to his heart. He shared that he recently felt uncomfortable when he was renting chairs from a company and five men who spoke a foreign language were standing outside waiting for a bus.

“No one spoke a bit of English,” he said. “You see a completely different environment.”

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Gomez reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.