Donald Trump’s presidential campaign released an ad Wednesday that centers on a mother whose son was killed by a man in the U.S. illegally.
Laura Wilkerson uses the spot to predict that Democratic presidential nominee’s Hillary Clinton’s immigration policy will lead to more violence.
{mosads}”The man who murdered Joshua is an illegal alien, and he should not have been here,” the Texas woman says in the advertisement.
“Hillary Clinton’s border policy is going to allow people into the country just like the one that murdered my son.”
Wilkerson describes the brutal way her son was beaten and killed in 2010 as tears well up in her eyes.
The ad is part of Trump’s aggressive plan to rally his base ahead of Election Day. The Republican’s campaign said the ad will air in Florida, Iowa, Maine, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
A statement from Stephen Miller, the campaign’s national policy director, notes that Joshua Wilkerson’s killer “did not qualify for deportation under the non-enforcement policies of President Obama and Hillary Clinton.”
“Had our laws been enforced, Josh would be alive today,” he added.
According to testimony Laura Wilkerson gave last year to the Senate Judiciary Committee, her son was killed in 2010, two years before President Obama took executive action to defer deportation for those brought to the country illegally as children.
The Department of Homeland Security hit a record number of deportations in 2013, according to Pew Research, before shifting to target known criminals under the president’s new directives in his second term.