By Ted Hesson and Alexandra Ulmer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Minutes before he takes the stage for the first presidential debate on Thursday, Donald Trump received a call from the mother of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was murdered in Houston this month, allegedly by two Venezuelan men who were in the US illegally. The mother, Alexis Nungaray, answered a voicemail Trump left earlier in the day while she was at her daughter’s funeral, a family friend, Victoria Galvan, who witnessed the call, told Reuters. Nungaray’s body was found June 17 in a creek near her home after her attackers allegedly took her under a bridge, tied her up, pulled off her pants and strangled her, police and prosecutors said.
The suspects – Johan Jose Martinez Rangel, 22, and Franklin Jose Pena Ramos, 26 – had been detained by U.S. border authorities in Texas earlier this year but released pending a court appearance. During the debate, Trump spoke about Nungaray’s case and the phone call as he hammered home Biden about his immigration policies, accusing the Democrat of letting murderers and rapists into the country. “There are many young women who have been murdered by the same people that he’s letting across our border,” Trump said. “These murderers are coming into our country and raping and murdering women. And it’s a horrible thing.”
Referring to Nungaray’s case, he said: “This is terrible, what has taken place… We are now literally an uncivilized country.”
Trump’s attacks come from a well-thumbed playbook he has used repeatedly since he first ran for office in 2015 to portray immigrants who crossed the southern border illegally as violent criminals. He typically focuses on young, mostly white, women allegedly murdered by Hispanic assailants to drive home that message, avoiding cases involving male victims. His opponents accuse him of cynically exploiting grieving families to fuel his narrative that foreign-born, often Spanish-speaking, arrivals are part of an invading army.
“Part of what’s going on here is an attempt to stoke xenophobia, animus or ethnic hostility,” said Christopher Federico, a professor of political science and psychology at the University of Minnesota, adding that Trump appears to be capitalizing on racist stereotypes painting Latino. men as threats to “the perceived purity of white femininity.”
Research generally shows that there is no evidence that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. Critics also say that Trump’s rhetoric reinforces racist sentiments.
Yet polls show the visceral message resonates with many voters, amplified by conservative media, pro-Trump influencers online and sometimes the grieving family members and friends of murdered women.
Galvan, 27, indicated that Biden owed Nungaray’s death to the easing of some restrictions at the US-Mexico border.
“I think Jocelyn would definitely still be here if President Trump was our president,” Galvan said, adding that she planned to vote in a presidential election for the first time and would support Trump.
Despite the lack of evidence, about three-quarters of Republicans said in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in May that illegal migrants in the U.S. “pose a threat to public safety.”
WELL WORN PLAYBOOK
Trump has attacked Biden over the record number of migrants illegally crossing the US-Mexico border. Immigration is a major issue among voters, especially among conservatives.
In response, Biden blamed Trump for urging Republicans to block a bipartisan U.S. Senate bill earlier this year that aimed to strengthen border security and portrayed Trump’s policies as unnecessarily cruel.
“Donald Trump is using the pain and loss of American families to benefit one person and one person alone: Donald Trump,” Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in a statement. “His sick and inhumane comments do nothing to make our border more secure and fall under the office of President of the United States.”
A digital ad featuring violent crimes and criticism of Biden was launched in seven battleground states last week as part of a push by the conservative group Building America’s Future.
The ad targets Rachel Morin, a mother of five who was raped and murdered while jogging near her home in Maryland in August 2023, and her alleged killer, an immigrant from El Salvador living illegally in the US .
“Joe Biden’s open border, a nightmare for American women,” a woman’s voice says as the face of Morin’s accused killer is shown next to Biden’s.
According to Susan Del Percio, a Republican strategist critical of Trump’s immigration rhetoric, Trump’s approach is reminiscent of the oft-quoted “Willie Horton” ad that attacked Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis during the 1988 presidential campaign.
Horton was black, and critics said the ad, which effectively supported the candidacy of Republican George H.W. Bush, was aimed at stoking fears based on race.
“Trump is saying, ‘We don’t like immigrants and now there’s another horrible reason not to like them. They’re going to come after you and kill you,'” she said.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Biden’s border policies had allowed dangerous criminals to enter the U.S. and that Trump was trying to support the families of the victims.
“President Trump calls their names, calls their mothers and stands with their families, while Joe Biden continues to ignore their suffering and welcomes millions of dangerous, criminal and illegal immigrants,” Leavitt said in a statement.
Trump has used inflammatory language to describe immigrants in the US illegally, including saying they are “poisoning the blood of the country.”
MIXED RECEPTION
The parents of some victims have welcomed Trump’s efforts to publicize the brutal killings, while others say he is simply politicizing the deaths of their loved ones.
In 2018, Trump publicized the case of Mollie Tibbetts after the 20-year-old University of Iowa student was murdered illegally in the U.S. by a Mexican immigrant, but Tibbetts’ father at the time slammed Trump for exploiting the tragedy for political gain.
Laura Calderwood, Tibbetts’ mother, told Reuters she believed her daughter’s killer was a troubled person but that the killing had nothing to do with his immigration status.
“It was an anomaly,” said Calderwood, a Democrat who plans to vote for Biden. “There are a lot of illegal immigrants here and they don’t go out and kill people.”
Michelle Root, whose daughter Sarah was killed in Nebraska in 2016 when her car was hit illegally in the US by a drunk driver, told Reuters that then-President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden never responded when she wrote to them at the time to draw attention to the case.
Obama’s personal office and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump, then a presidential candidate, invited her to meet him for a rally in Omaha, she said. The meeting convinced Root — a lifelong Democrat who voted for Obama twice — to support Trump.
He later called her and asked her permission to mention Sarah’s case at his acceptance for the Republican presidential nomination that summer, she said.
“If it wasn’t for him, Sarah wouldn’t have had a voice,” she said.
Patty Morin, Rachel Morin’s mother, was “incredibly moved” when Trump reached out to her earlier this month to offer her condolences, her attorney, Randolph Rice, told Reuters.
“During the 20-minute call, the President asked about Rachel and her family and how they were doing,” Rice said in an email. “She has yet to hear from the Biden administration.”
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington and Alexandra Ulmer in San Francisco; Editing by Ross Colvin, Kieran Murray and Daniel Wallis)
