Migrants trying to enter the Spanish enclave of Melilla have now become part of the US presidential election campaign landscape after hopeful Donald Trump included footage of it, claiming it was the US border with Mexico.
Donald Trump’s first TV ad for his campaign shows migrants climbing a tall barrier wall. The narrator says Trump will “stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for.”
The footage, however, is not of migrants knocking on Mexico’s door but rather people trying to leave Morocco and break into Melilla.
The ad highlights Trump’s intention for a temporary shutdown on Muslims entering the United States “until we can figure out what is going on”.
In addition, he promises to “quickly cut the head off ISIS and take their oil”.
"I am very proud of this ad," Trump said Monday.
The fact-checking website PolitiFact said it traced the migrant footage to an Italian broadcast from May 2014 and that it was of people swooping down on the Melilla border, thousands of miles from Mexico.
It also said that Repubblica TV had attributed the video to the Spanish interior ministry.
Trump's campaign said the footage was "intentional and selected to demonstrate the severe impact of an open border" and the "very real threat" to America by not building a wall on the Mexican border.
"The biased mainstream media doesn't understand, but Americans who want to protect their jobs and their families do," it said.
The Republican frontrunner has boasted of saving $35 million by no spending on television ads until now. But now this 30-second ad will cost $2 million a week for about one month as it airs in the two states, Iowa and New Hampshire, which are the first to vote to nominate the final candidates of each party.
