US presidential contender Donald Trump has sparked uproar with more anti-immigrant rhetoric, claiming there are thousands of immigrants with murder convictions spreading “bad genes” in the United States.

Trump made the comments in a radio interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt on Monday while blasting the immigration policies of his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.

He said 13,000 “murderers” had crossed through the US’s “open borders” and were “happily living” in the country.

“You know now, a murderer – I believe this – it’s in their genes. We’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now,” Trump told Hewitt.

Trump’s claims, which distort data from the US’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, drew swift condemnation from the White House.

“That type of language is hateful, it’s disgusting, it’s inappropriate, and has no place in our country,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Other critics said it followed a long history of the Republican presidential candidate’s “scapegoating” of migrants and tapping into racial prejudices.

“It’s just a way for him (and by extension, some of his supporters) to view themselves as superior to the immigrants he’s scapegoating,” wrote Washington Post columnist Philip Bump.

“Echoes of Nazi Germany,” wrote former US ambassador and political analyst Michael McFaul.

Data unveiled by ICE in September showed there were 13,099 people with homicide convictions on ICE’s “non-detained docket”. However, many of them are not free, but in state or federal prison. Others entered the US years or decades ago.

Trump, who is neck-and-neck with Harris in key battleground states ahead of the November presidential election, has zeroed in on immigration while on the campaign trail, demonising both undocumented migrants and people who have come into the country legally.

During a rally last month, the 78 year old said Harris should be prosecuted over the White House’s border policies and called undocumented immigrants “animals” out to “rape, pillage, thieve, plunder and kill”.

“They will walk into your kitchen, they’ll cut your throat,” he said.

Trump also threatened to deport legal residents from Haiti, repeating discredited claims that they were eating family pets in Ohio.

Trump – the oldest major-party White House candidate in history and the first ex-president ever convicted of a crime – accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country” in December in a phrase that earned him comparisons to Adolf Hitler.

Immigration is a flashpoint issue for many voters in the US, where irregular border crossings reached a record high at the end of 2023. (Al Jazeera)

•PHOTO: Critics say comments from former President Donald Trump are latest in series of attacks on immigrants [File: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo]