Sawt Falasteen - Harris, Trump campaign in battlegrounds as migrant row intensifies

Trump, 78, was due to hold a rally later Friday in Nevada, where his campaign says he will focus on voters' economic worries, including inflation.

Harris, coming off a strong performance in Tuesday's televised debate against Trump, was headed to Pennsylvania -- arguably the most crucial of the swing states that decide the winner in close presidential elections.

Opinion polls show a near dead heat with only seven weeks until election day.

Stung by widespread agreement, including among some prominent Republicans, that Democrat Harris won Tuesday's debate, Trump is doubling down on harsh rhetoric about illegal immigration -- the issue at the core of his campaign.

In remarks from his luxury golf course near Los Angeles, Trump accused "communist" Harris of "allowing illegal aliens to stampede across our border."

And he homed in on the small Ohio city of Springfield, saying Haitian immigrants there are "destroying their way of life."

"We will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio," he said. "We're going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country."

Springfield is at the center of swirling conspiracy theory spread by Republicans and Trump's campaign that claims Haitians are eating local residents' pets.

On Friday, Springfield authorities evacuated schools for a second day amid unspecified threats linked to the growing tension.

The head of the local Haitian community center, Viles Dorsainvil, told AFP that the FBI was investigating threatening phone calls to the organization.

Trump magnified the false story about the pets in extended comments Thursday where he claimed park geese were likewise being killed by Haitians -- and told a rally that "young American girls being raped and sodomized and murdered by savage criminal aliens."

President Joe Biden, who dropped out of his own reelection campaign to endorse Harris instead, intervened Friday to say that Trump "has to stop" inflaming tensions, and that "there's no place in America for this."

- Far-right entourage -

There was also mounting controversy over the presence of far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer in Trump's entourage.

She traveled with him to the debate on Tuesday and also accompanied him to Ground Zero on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks -- despite having claimed that the deadliest terrorist attack in US history was an "inside job."

"I don't control Laura, Laura says what she wants," Trump told reporters in Los Angeles.

"Laura has been a supporter of mine," he said, adding that he'd never heard she had spread 9/11 conspiracies.

Loomer has drawn fire from even hard-right Republicans over her comment that Harris, whose mother was Indian, would make the White House "smell like curry."

As November 5 election day rapidly approaches, Trump has been forced to pivot his campaign to fight Harris, rather than Biden, who at 81 was seen by his own Democratic Party as unlikely to win.

Trump's struggles have been increasingly visible, including his televised remarks at the golf course Friday.

He spoke defensively about the polls, which he claimed showed him far ahead, and insisted again that he had dominated Harris at the debate. He has also refused her challenge to hold another debate.

On Thursday, Trump was in the toss-up state of Arizona, while Harris held two rallies in North Carolina, likewise a battleground.

- 'Turn the page' -

Harris, 59, has largely avoided responding directly to Trump's personal attacks, choosing to pitch herself as a leader from a new generation who will end the constant drama and division that characterized Trump's presidency and post-presidential career.

When Trump brought up the false story about pets being eaten by migrants in their debate, she responded by shaking her head disbelievingly.

On Thursday, Harris told rally-goers in North Carolina, "It's time to turn the page."

Despite raising huge amounts of donations and drawing neck-and-neck with Trump in the polls, Harris again insisted Thursday that she still has a lot of work to do.

"We know ours will be a very tight race until the very end. We are the underdog. Let's be clear about that," she said.

Q.Jaber--SF-PST