During a meeting with border patrol agents on Friday, Donald Trump claimed that immigrants are crossing over the border into the United States so that they can illegally cast a ballot.
“They are letting people pour into this country so they can go and vote,” he said, according to reporters.
The remark came after a representative of the border patrol union — a group that controversially endorsed Trump earlier this year — claimed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stopped deporting undocumented immigrants “so they can go ahead and vote before the election.”
Here is the full exchange with Art Del Cueto, vice president of the National Border Control Council:
Del Cueto: I spoke to several agents in my sector who are in charge of processing. And the problem that we’re seeing reflected though us as a voice is that some of these individuals that we’ve apprehended with criminal records, they’re not, they’re checking their records, they see that they have criminal records, but they’re setting them aside because at this point they are saying immigration is so tied up with trying to get the people who are on the waiting list to hurry up and get them their immigration status corrected.
Trump: Why?
Del Cueto: So they can go ahead and vote before the election.
Trump: Big statement, fellas. [He motions to the press pool.] You’re not going to write it. That’s huge. But they’re letting people pour into the country so they can go and vote.
Del Cueto: They want to hurry up and fast track them so they can go ahead and vote in the election.
Trump: And these are the professionals. You hear a thing like that, and it’s a disgrace. Well, it will be a lot different if I get elected.
There is no evidence that immigrants are illegally crossing the U.S. border in order to cast a ballot in November. Anyone who did would run the risk of multiple felonies, including entering the country without documents and committing voter fraud.
Despite the fact that voter fraud is virtually non-existent, Trump has been stoking fears about a “rigged election” for months. He has called for poll monitors, people who would intimidate voters at urban polling locations, and has said that without strict voter identification laws, people would be “voting 15 times for Hillary.”
Trump and other conservatives have also continued to claim that non-citizen voting is a widespread problem. The Republican nominee has specifically targeted same-day registration, saying it would lead to an increase in undocumented immigrants voting.
And Trump ally Kris Kobach, Kansas’ secretary of state who takes credit for writing the Republican nominee’s border wall policy, has repeatedly pushed for voter suppression laws and illegally purged voter rolls in his state in order to ensure that non-citizens aren’t voting.
While conservatives focus on mythical voter fraud, immigrants are seeking citizenship at higher rates in order to vote against Trump in the upcoming election. According to a New York Times report from March, “naturalization applications increased by 11 percent in the 2015 fiscal year over the year before, and jumped 14 percent during the six months ending in January, according to federal figures.”
In Florida alone, more than 800,000 people are immigrants eligible to become citizens. In a critical swing state with a tight Senate race, that number could be enough to swag the election.
Update: Shortly after the meeting, border patrol union union spokesman Shawn Moran clarified to the AP that Trump conflated several issues and that immigrants are not in fact flooding across the border to vote.