Former President Donald Trump will speak at 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Grand Rapids Convention Saturday.
In an interview with Justin Barclay on Monday, Trump said he plans to address the March 22 murder of Ruby Garcia by illegal immigrant Brandon Ortiz-Vite in Grand Rapids. Ortiz-Vite was deported during the waning days of Trump’s administration, but reentered the country as a gotaway after President Joe Biden took office. After his second illegal entry into the U.S., Ortiz-Vite returned to Grand Rapids where he shot and killed Garcia, dumped her body in downtown Grand Rapids, and stole her car.
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Ortiz-Vite was back in police custody on March 24 and was arraigned last Tuesday. Kent County court officials said Ortiz-Vite was previously arrested for breaking and entering in 2018, and for operating while intoxicated in 2020. Court records show Ortiz-Vite was wanted on bench warrant in the 2020 case for failure to appear at the time of his most recent arrest.
Trump said he would like to express his sympathies to Garcia’s family in person while he’s in Grand Rapids as he campaigns for his former seat behind the Resolute desk.
“We had a tough policy of getting the bad ones out,” Trump told Barclay. “If we were getting the bad ones out and now the bad ones are coming in at a level that nobody’s ever seen before.… I don’t think any country in the world has ever seen what’s happening now,” the former president continued.
Trump said the illegal immigrants were coming in at “horrible” levels, and that criminals and mental patients were making their way illegally into the U.S. “at levels that no other country has ever seen before.”
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Trump also addressed the spate of criminal violence in Oakland County at the hands of Chilean gangs. Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said gang members gained access to the country through a Visa Waiver Program.
If reelected, Trump told Barclay, he would mount the most massive deportation of illegal immigrants in U.S. history.
Trump will appear at the Grand Rapids Convention Center, 303 Monroe Ave NW, Grand Rapids, MI, 49503. He is slated to speak at 2:30 p.m.