Trump says migrants who have committed murder bring with them “a lot of bad genes.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump suggested Monday that migrants staying in the U.S. who have committed murder did so because “it's in their genes.” There are, he added, “a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

It is the latest example of Trump claiming that immigrants are changing the hereditary structure of the United States. Last year he invoked language once used by Adolf Hitler arguing that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Trump made the comments on Monday in a radio interview with conservative host Hugh Hewitt. He criticized his Democratic rival for the 2024 presidential election, Vice President Kamala Harris, when he addressed immigration, citing: statistics The Department of Homeland Security says it also includes cases from its administration.

“How about allowing people to come across an open border, 13,000 of whom were murderers? Many of them murdered far more than one person,” Trump said. “And they now live happily in the United States. You know, now a murderer – I believe this: it's in her genes. And we have a lot of bad genes in our country right now. Then 425,000 people came into our country who shouldn’t be here and are criminals.”

Trump's campaign team said his comments about genes were about murderers.

“He was clearly referring to murderers, not migrants. “It's pretty disgusting that the media is so quick to defend murderers, rapists and illegal criminals if it means writing a bad headline about President Trump,” Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign's national press secretary, said in a statement.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement published data on immigration control Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales spoke last month about the people under his supervision, including those not in ICE custody. This included 13,099 people found guilty of murder and 425,431 people convicted of felonies.

But these numbers span decades, including during the Trump administration. And those not in ICE custody could be arrested by state or local law enforcement, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE.

The Harris campaign declined to comment.

Asked about Trump's “bad genes” comment during her briefing with reporters on Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: “This type of language is hateful, it is disgusting, it is inappropriate, it has in our country no space.”

The Biden administration has tightened asylum restrictions for migrantsand Harris, who is trying to address a vulnerability in the election campaign, has worked to take a tougher stance on the subject of immigration.

The former president and Republican nominee has made illegal immigration a central plank of his 2024 campaign and vowed to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history if elected. He has a long history of comments vilifying immigrants, including calling them “animals” and “murderers” and saying they spread disease.

Last month, during his debate with Harris, Trump falsely claimed Haitian immigrants in Ohio kidnapped and ate pets.

As president, he asked the question why the US welcomed immigrants from Haiti and Africa instead of Norway and told four congressmen, all people of color, three of whom were born in the United States, to “go back and help fix the completely broken and crime-ridden places from which they came.”

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Associated Press writer Will Weissert in Washington contributed to this report.