Trump Thinks the Border Got Him Elected in 2016. He’s Convinced It Will Do So Again.

Donald J. Trump turned his back to the crowd and stared up at the screen. Ominous music rang out. For the next minute and a half, the former president and his audience in Atlanta stood and silently watched clips of news reports of undocumented immigrants committing horrific crimes.

When the montage ended, Mr. Trump said out loud what he has been telling his advisers in private for weeks: that, in his view, immigration is the “No. 1” issue in the 2024 election.

“That beats out the economy. That beats it all out to me, it’s not even close,” Mr. Trump said of the immigration issue, after playing the video on Tuesday night. “The United States is now an occupied country. But on Nov. 5, 2024, that will be liberation day in America.”

In the final weeks of a campaign that the former president has been waging more or less since his first year out of office, Mr. Trump is going with his gut, doubling down on the rhetoric that he believes won him the 2016 election and using immigration and the border to form the core of his closing message to voters.

Those instincts are at odds with the data, and with some of his advisers.

Mr. Trump has told aides that he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 with the border but that in 2020 the border was “fixed” — illegal crossings had dropped to a dramatic low in part because of the coronavirus pandemic — so he could not use it as an issue against Joseph R. Biden Jr. He thinks immigration is more potent than ever as a political message, after the record levels of border crossings under the Biden-Harris administration {snip}

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Mr. Trump has spent considerable time and energy in recent days at economy-themed events, pitching proposals to make car loan interest fully tax deductible and to offer companies tax breaks and other benefits if they move their manufacturing to the United States or keep it there.

But Mr. Trump draws his energy from his rallies, and it is the reaction on immigration he is getting there that is helping convince him that the issue is better for him than the economy. {snip}

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And Mr. Trump has a new reason for focusing on the issue: He has told rally audiences and people close to him that his opposition to illegal immigration saved his life.

In Butler, Pa., in July, Mr. Trump turned his head to look at a chart of illegal border crossings on a screen at the very moment a would-be assassin’s bullet missed his skull by less than an inch and grazed his ear. He has given the chart, and the issue it illustrated, an almost mythical status. “If you think about it, illegal immigration saved my life — I’m the only one,” Mr. Trump told a crowd in Aurora, Colo. “Usually, it’s the opposite.”

Some in Mr. Trump’s orbit, like his influential adviser Stephen Miller, fully support his instinct to emphasize immigration as the top issue for voters. {snip}

Mr. Trump has been pushing advisers to get more immigration content, and they are obliging. Mr. Miller — the hardest of immigration hard-liners — has been flying more often on Mr. Trump’s plane since the summer and playing a big role in shaping his closing message. {snip}

Last month, Mr. Trump was intent on visiting Springfield, Ohio, after spreading unfounded rumors that Haitian migrants there were eating the pets of the city’s residents. {snip}

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Instead of going to Springfield, the compromise within the former president’s campaign was for Mr. Trump to give the speech in Aurora, Colo., a city he has used to exaggerate the harms inflicted by migrant gangs. Like Ohio, Colorado is not a battleground state, but Mr. Trump was determined to make the visit to highlight his personal top issue.

Speaking there on Oct. 11, Mr. Trump highlighted his desire to use the Alien Enemies Act — last used during World War II to place people of Japanese descent, among others, in internment camps — to deport gang leaders. The law lets officials make sweeping deportations of people from countries that have invaded or are at war with the United States, or that have made “predatory incursions.” {snip}

Even when Mr. Trump does talk about the economy he tends to bring his points back to immigration. When The New York Times asked the Trump campaign for its plan to lower the cost of housing, the campaign’s response was that mass deportations would increase the supply of housing and therefore reduce costs.

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Now, immigration is a powerful motivating issue in a general election, the second-most important for many voters. And one of Mr. Trump’s signature policy proposals — building a border wall — is now broadly popular, expanding beyond Mr. Trump’s base.

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Mr. Trump is favored over Vice President Kamala Harris on both the economy and immigration. But while Mr. Trump’s lead on the economy has narrowed in some polls, his lead on immigration remains wide and consistent.

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