Trump says he will compensate US victims of migrant crime

Donald Trump has started the final week of his campaign by elevating border security as his priority issue, and declared his Madison Square Garden rally was an ‘absolute love fest’.

Donald Trump speaks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago. Picture: Getty Images via AFP.

Donald Trump says he will compensate the American victims of migrant crime by seizing the assets of gangs and drug cartels if he wins on November 5, with the former president elevating border security as his priority issue in the final stretch of the campaign.

Appearing at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Tuesday morning (Wednesday AEDT), Mr Trump also focused on the economic toll of soaring inflation on American small businesses and the damage of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

He accused Kamala Harris of running a “campaign of absolute hate.”

Following criticism of his Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday (Monday AEDT) where comedian Tony Hinchcliffe likened Puerto Rico to a “floating pile of garbage,” Mr Trump was defiant.

He said “the love in that room – it was breathtaking.”

“You could have filled it many, many times with the people who were unable to get in,” he said. “Politicians that have been doing this for a long time, 30 and 40 years, said there has never been an event so beautiful.”

“It was like a love fest,” Mr Trump said. “An absolute love fest. And it was my honour to be involved.”

He also rejected as “terrible” the parallels drawn between the event and a pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939, arguing he was “going to fight like hell for the next seven days.”

In a key announcement, Mr Trump said that if he was successful on November 5 he would ensure the US government would be “seizing the assets of the criminal gangs and drug cartels.’

“And we will use those assets to create a compensation fund to provide restitution for the victims of migrant crime,” he said. 

Mr Trump invited three people up to speak alongside him, starting with Tammy Nobles – the mother of 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton who was murdered in July 2022 by an illegal migrant and MS-13 gang member.

The former president said that Kayla was found raped and strangled to death with a telephone cord in her home, describing Ms Nobles as a “great person” and “an American mum.”

Ms Nobles said that “the Biden Administration did not do their job” and blamed it for her daughter’s death.

“If they would have done their job … and made that one phonecall to El Salvador, my daughter would still be alive today,” she said.

Ms Nobles said her daughter had overcome obstacles and was dealing with autism, yet she was still able to “find a job that she loved.”

“She loved God and she loved going to church, and her life was just ripped from her three days after she celebrated her twentieth birthday,” Ms Nobles said. 

Mr Trump warned the inflation crisis had also cost typical American families over $30,000 and two thirds were living from pay check to pay check.

“Now she (Kamala) wants to raise taxes on the typical family by $3000 a year. She’s got no empathy for the hard working Americans whose dreams she killed,” Mr Trump said.

He went on to invite up to speak the owner of the Florida-based Go Green Dry Cleaners, Michael Koppy, who said that 30 per cent of the industry “never survived Covid”.

Mr Koppy said the reality of inflation meant that “unless we effect change immediately, I fear that in the next few years … we might see another 30 per cent of our industry and others no longer exist.”

Christy Shamblin, whose daughter-in-law, Marine Sergeant Nicole Gee was killed in a terrorist attack during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, was also asked up to address the media by Mr Trump.

Ms Shamblin said that her daughter-in-law was killed in the “botched Afghanistan exit at Abbey Gate” and was the “corner stone of a very large family.”

“Our family and thousands of other families plan outings at funeral gravesites and that is where we as a family celebrate my daughter-in-law, at Arlington National Cemetery. Because she is in the ground,” Ms Shamblin said.

“There are thousands and thousands and thousands of wounded veterans who came home from that war who need our help and who are ignored by our current administration,” she said. “President Trump demonstrates peace through strength.”

Mr Trump said that “nobody should have died” and attacked the manner of the 2021 withdrawal.

He opened the media event at Mar-a-Lago by warning that Ms Harris had “obliterated our borders,” while ravaging the US economy and stealing the presidency from Joe Biden.

“The way they took that away from him (Mr Biden) was not right,” he said. “You can call it a coup or whatever … but they stole it.”

In a reference to the advancing age of the US president, Mr Trump also said Ms Harris needed to be held responsible for the key decisions made over the last four years because Mr Biden “didn’t know too much about what was happening.” 

“We’ve never had a situation like this,” he said.

Mr Trump said the border was the “single biggest issue” facing the country, arguing that there was “nothing more important than the fabric of our country being destroyed.”

He warned that “bloodshed” and “squalor” in US cities was now common, and accused the Democrats of unleashing a “war and chaos all over the world.”

“No person has caused so much destruction and death at home and abroad,” he said. “So, I’m running on a plan to save America.” 

“Her (Kamala’s) message has been a message of hate and division,” he said. “And my message is about saving our economy, securing our border, bringing together the greatest and broadest coalition in American history.”

“I’m going to fix it. And I’m going to fix it fast.”