NEW YORK (Sputnik) – In a speech announcing his intention to join the 2016 presidential race, Trump characterized Mexican immigrants as rapists and stated they mostly bring drugs and crime to the United States.
Those and subsequent comments caused two television networks, the department store Macy’s and the city of New York to sever business ties with Trump.
"We already know what his policy would be: close the border, squeeze more immigrants, deporting," Antiguo Lopez, director of Hermandad Mexicana, a non-profit organization serving Latin American families, told Sputnik on Friday.
According to Lopaz, Trump is unlikely to win the US presidential race, but could push the moderate segments of the Republican party further to the right, which could lead to an increasingly repressive immigration policy in the United States.
"Using immigrants as culprits of economic difficulties will sow division between the American people and immigrants who are of the same social class: the working class," Lopaz warned.
Border Network For Human Rights, an American community-based organization focusing on immigration rights has issued a statement calling for more accountability on the part of US authorities when it comes to the issue of immigration.
"Border communities, and the general public, should be demanding greater transparency and accountability, and solutions to the real problem at the border: an ineffective and inefficient border enforcement regime which believes it can act with impunity in ways that harm the well being of migrants and Americans alike," the statement says.
Border Network For Human Rights expressed doubt that billionaire Trump’s stance on immigration could change in the future, despite his Thursday visit to the US-Mexico border.
"Spending a day at the US-Mexico Border is highly unlikely to change Donald Trump’s views on immigration or Mexican-Americans—for his own sake we can hope that this trip leads him away from the racist and thoroughly unhinged fearmongering that has come out of his mouth up to this point, but there is no reason for optimism," the human rights organization said.
At the US-Mexico border, Trump explained that illegal immigration is a huge problem for the United States and one that legal immigrants themselves want fixed.
Based on the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, Trump is the leader among Republican presidential candidates and has almost twice the support than former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
