Trump hears at a Latino campaign event from someone who lived in the U.S. illegally

LAS VEGAS — Minutes after Donald Trump delivered his standard warnings about drug dealers and criminals illegally crossing the border during a Saturday campaign event, the former president heard from someone who was once in the country illegally but now plans to vote for him.

Elias Trujillo was one of several people who spoke Saturday during a Latino roundtable in Las Vegas intended to spotlight Trump’s economic ideas. After Trump finished addressing a small crowd inside the warehouse of a women’s cosmetics company, members of the roundtable spoke. Trujillo began by telling about how his mother brought him and his brothers from northern Mexico to Utah in 1995 to rejoin their father, who was working in construction.

“We came here legally, but you know, we overstayed, and we were able to make life here in the United States,” Trujillo said, referring to the action of entering the U.S. on a legal visa but not departing when that visa expires.

At least one person in the audience began laughing and applauding, leading Trujillo to laugh and acknowledge, “It is funny.” Trump smiled as he looked at Trujillo.

The moment highlighted the contradictory ways the facts and rhetoric of immigration play in the campaign. The paradoxes are sharper as Trump has simultaneously counted on increased support from Latinos returning him to the White House.

Trump has said migrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country, called the recent influx across the southern border an “invasion” and pledged to launch mass deportations if he returns to the White House.

The day before his Las Vegas roundtable, Trump was in Aurora, Colo., warning that a Venezuelan gang is terrorizing the city of 400,000. The city’s Republican mayor said Trump is distorting an isolated problem there.