Trump says migrant crisis ruining ‘overwhelmed’ NYC — cites Coney Island rape while blaming Kamala Harris

Donald Trump said Monday that illegal immigration has “overwhelmed” New York City — citing the brutal rape of a 46-year-old woman Sunday at Coney Island and slamming Vice President Kamala Harris’ performance as President Biden’s “border czar.”

The former president tore into Harris, who he will face in the Nov. 5 election, as a “third-rate phony candidate” while citing crime in the Big Apple associated with people who crossed the US-Mexico border illegally while Harris was Biden’s designee to reduce crossings.

“I saw it today in New York, where somebody was knifed, where they raped the girlfriend of a man that stood there watching in New York in one of the shelters and started pulling out the knives. And bad things happen today, but this is happening every day,” Trump told Elon Musk in a live-streamed X Spaces conversation.

“We’re already overwhelmed. Elon, we’re overwhelmed. You had to see the news tonight about New York — New York, and I love that place, and what they’re doing to it is horrible. What they’re doing to it, and all the courts do is they try and focus on Trump.”

Trump invoked his hometown following two high-profile migrant-related crimes — a stabbing Sunday morning at a migrant center at Randall’s Island and also the brutal rape Sunday evening by a pair of migrant men, including one who was released from jail in June after allegedly sexually assaulting a different woman at a city shelter.

Daniel Davon-Bonilla, 24, of Nicaragua, allegedly raped his victim while holding a knife to her throat around 9 p.m. Sunday under the Riegelmann Boardwalk. His alleged accomplice, Leovando Moreno, 37, of Mexico allegedly bashed the victim’s 34-year-old boyfriend with a pipe to prevent him from intervening. 

Davon-Bonilla entered the country illegally through Eagle Pass, Texas, on Dec. 7, 2022, sources told The Post. He apparently was released under the Biden-Harris approach of letting migrants wait inside the US for the outcome of backlogged asylum proceedings, during which time they are entitled to work permits.

Four months after entering the country, Davon-Bonila was arrested for allegedly raping a woman by pulling her hair and holding her down as he attacked her at a Brooklyn hotel that was turned into a migrant shelter. He was released in June after a plea deal.

“These are criminals that make our criminals look like nice people, and it’s horrible what they’re doing. And she’s in charge of it because, you know, now she’s trying to say she had nothing to do with it,” Trump told Musk.

“She’s such a liar because she was called the ‘border czar’ the first day, and it was on the headlines of every newspaper, ‘She’s the border czar.’ And she never even went there. She went to one location which had nothing to do with where the problem is.”

Trump added: “She was the border czar, and people can’t allow them to get away with their disinformation campaign. Now she’s trying to say that she wasn’t really involved, and the whole thing is horrible. She was totally in charge.”

In a jab at Biden, 81, Trump said, “She could have shut the border down without him. He didn’t know what he was doing anyways and he wouldn’t have even known what happened. You could shut the border down and he wouldn’t even know the difference.”

Trump also slammed Harris for dodging the press since Biden ended his candidacy for a second term on July 21 amid a Democratic revolt over his mental acuity and endorsed her as his successor.

“She hasn’t done an interview since his whole scam started,” he exclaimed after calling her “incompetent.”

Biden assigned Harris in March 2021 with the role of addressing the “root causes” of illegal immigration with the leaders of Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. 

Harris was widely known as the nation’s “border czar,” but illegal crossings continued to hit new record highs during the first three years of her tenure in the role.

So far in fiscal 2024, which ends Sept. 30, authorities apprehended 1,821,652 migrants along the southern border as of June 30 — up from 1,789,492 in the same period of fiscal 2023 — though numbers were beginning to trend lower.

A record-breaking nearly 2.5 million people were apprehended after illegally crossing the US-Mexico border in fiscal 2023, in addition to an estimated 670,000 “gotaways” who were able to evade arrests. Fiscal 2022 said a previous record of nearly 2.4 million detentions — up from 1.7 million in fiscal 2021.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in January that 85% of migrants who illegally enter the US are being released to await decisions — following Biden’s decision to end Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy requiring most asylum seekers to await rulings elsewhere.

“Kamala and Joe, you see what happened? They just let it go. I had ‘Remain in Mexico’ policies. I had all these different policies that were so good,” Trump told Musk.

“She’s saying she was strong on the border and we’re going to be strong. Well, she doesn’t have to say it, she could close it up right now.”

Harris’ presidential campaign manager, then-White House official Julie Chavez Rodriguez, clashed with New York City Mayor Eric Adams last year when he tried to warn Democrats internally that record-breaking illegal immigration risked alienating black and Hispanic Americans — leading to a public break between the White House and City Hall on the issue.