Trump stands his ground on immigration at Univision town hall with Latino voters

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday fielded numerous questions related to immigration during a town hall with Latino voters on Univision, doubling down on his strict border policies with a group heavily affected by the immigration surge.

Latino voters probed him over his efforts to tank a bipartisan border bill earlier this year, the need for laborers in the face of deportations, and the ongoing situation with Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio.

Trump, for his part, held to his calls for stricter border policies and vowed to stabilize both the border situation and to address the economic consequences related to such a move.

Addressing the consequences of labor, Trump cited the need to bring in foreign laborers, but highlighted the influx of criminals under the current system.

"We have to have a lot of people come into our country. We just want them to come in legally through a system, because they've released hundreds of 1000s of people that are murderers, drug dealers, terrorists, they're coming in totally," he said. "Nobody knows who they are, where they come from, and the people that are most against it are the Hispanic people."

"They are totally against it. What's happened? The other thing I can say is that a lot of the jobs that you have and that other people have are being taken by these people that are coming in, and the African American population and the Hispanic population in particular, are losing jobs now because millions of people are coming in," he went on.

When pressed on the issue of Springfield, Ohio, and the rumors of migrants eating pets, Trump said he was just "saying what was reported" and pointed to the consequences of adding 30,000 people to a population of 50,000.

"You have a city of 52,000 people, and they've added almost 30,000 migrants into the city, if you were a person that lived there, if you lived in Springfield, Ohio, and all of a sudden you couldn't get into a hospital, you couldn't get your children into a school, you wouldn't be able to buy groceries, you can no longer pay the rent, because the government's paying rent," he said. "Any of that, if any of that happened, it would be a disaster for you, and you wouldn't be happy. We want to make our people safe and secure, and we want to make them happy. But Springfield, Ohio is a perfect example."