Immigrant groups are blasting Donald Trump's prime-time Republican National Convention speech on immigration as "pure hate and racism."

In a "dark," often high-pitched speech some instantly labeled as rambling, Trump painted the picture for an overflow crowd of GOP supporters and a national TV audience of undocumented immigrants aimlessly wondering the streets of American cities intent on nothing more than causing destruction.

"Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens," he said.

No Pivot

Trump's overly-harsh rhetoric left many immigration advocates convinced that the conventional pivot to the middle many politicians make come general election season is not part of his game plan.

"He started his campaign a year ago with Mexicans as rapists - he starts his general election campaign with undocumented immigrants as murderers," said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice and veteran of immigration legislative battles. "Pure hate and racism."

Many immigration activists shared Sharry's overview in assessing the message Trump's words seemed to convey.

"Trump is trying to rally a nation around hate towards everyone who is not white," said Yvanna Cancela, political director of the 60,000 member Culinary Union in Las Vegas, more than half of which are Latinos.

"That should be terrifying not only for folks who fall into these marginalized groups but for everyone, because it is not what this country is built on," he added. "It's not leadership."

Alida Garcia, a 2012 Obama campaign veteran director of coalitions and policy for Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us, took matters one step further, insisting that Trump's message clearly reveal his desire to create a police state for the purposes of rounding up immigrants.

"It's clear Donald Trump has no intention to move away from his frightening immigration policies of deporting 11 million people in 18 months and revoking the citizenship of U.S. citizen children, which would tank our economy and create a modern day police state," she said.

Objections to Trump's message also extended outside of just Democratic quarters.

LIBRE Initiative executive director Daniel Garza spent half his time in Cleveland knocking the policies of Trump's democratic challenger Hillary Clinton, but when Trump's speech was done he too admitted that he was disappointed in his message about immigration.

"I was cringing the whole time when he was talking about immigrants," he said. "What disturbs me the most about Trump's rhetoric is he makes the criminal element seem like the rule when they're really the exception. "Immigrants contributing to the economy is the norm."

Immigrants Adding Billions in Taxes

Indeed, a recent Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) "Undocumented Immigrants' State & Local Tax Contributions study found that undocumented immigrants residing in the U.S. pay out an estimated $11.64 billion in annual taxes.

The payments were found to come in the form of state and local taxes, totaling an average of about 8 percent of their incomes. Researchers added of the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants estimated to be living in the U.S. as of 2013, $6.9 billion payments come from sales and excise taxes, $3.6 billion comes from property taxes and the remaining $1.1 billion comes from personal income taxes.

Researchers concluded that if all undocumented immigrants were granted legal status and allowed to be legally employed their overall tax contributions would increase by around $2.1 billion annually and the nationwide tax rate would jump by nearly 9 percent.

"It's just a fundamental mischaracterization of the economic effect of immigration," Lopez added of Trump's argument to deport immigrants in the name of helping American workers. "That doesn't mean illegal immigration is OK but it does mean you have to understand 'Economics 101' and not just cynically demagogue the community."

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