Businessman Donald Trump announced his bid for the White House on Tuesday, but along the way, he said comments labeling immigrants as rapists and murderers.

Straying away from his prepared speech, Trump said, "They (Mexico) are not our friend, believe me. ... The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems. ... When Mexico sends its people, they are not sending their best. They are not sending you. They are sending people that have lots of problems, and they are bringing those problems to us. They are bringing drugs and they are bringing crime, and they're rapists."

He continued, "Some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we are getting. They are not sending us the right people. It's coming all over South and Latin America, and it's coming probably from the Middle East, but we don't know because we have no protection and we have no competence. We don't know what is happening and it has got to stop and it has to stop fast."

Following his presidential announcement, Trump further commented on the immigration remarks. He told MSNBC's Kasie Hunt, "They're sending us not their finest people. They're sending us people, and it's people other than Mexico. We have drug dealers coming across, we have rapists, we have killers, we have murderers. What do you think they're going to send us -- it's common sense -- they're going to send us their best people and their finest people? The answer is no."

Some of Trump's comments were improvised since it was not included in the "prepared for delivery" transcript. In the prepared remarks, Trump said it was "way past time" to build a wall on the southern U.S. border, and he will build a bigger and better wall.

"A country without borders is, quite simply, not a country," said Trump in the prepared remarks. "Mexico is not our friend. They are beating us at the border and hurting us badly at economic development. They are sending people that they don't want -- the United States is becoming a dumping ground for the world."

Speaking to reporters at an antidiscrimination event in Mexico City, Mexico's Interior Minister Angel Osorio Chong said Trump's comments were ignorant and only made to generate controversy.

Osorio Chong said, via Reuters, "Regarding the comments made by Donald Trump, to me they seem prejudiced and absurd."

Tuesday's comments were not the first time Trump made similar statement toward immigrants, Mexicans and the Latin American region. In January during an event hosted by Rep. Steve King's, R-Iowa, Trump said half of the undocumented immigrant population "are criminals." In a 2008 report from the conservative Americas Majority Foundation, U.S. states with the highest immigration growth rates also encountered the lowest crime rates. According to the American Immigration Council, many detained immigrants have been criminally charged with an immigration violation and "nothing more."

"In other words, they may be in federal prison even though they have not committed a violent crime or even a property crime," noted the American Immigration Council. "Their only crime might be entering the country without permission. The federal government has chosen to prosecute more and more unauthorized immigrants for "unlawful entry" rather than simply deporting them, which means that they end up in federal prison.

In 2013, Trump told attendees at an Iowa-based conservative event that congressional immigration reform, specifically the Senate-approved bill, "could be a death wish for the Republican Party." Last March, as Right Wing Watch reported, Trump told "The Steve Deace Show" that "millions" of immigrants are entering the U.S. and "destroying the fabric of the country."

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For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com.

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