Harrisburg, Pennsylvania - Donald Trump took his extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric to another level on Friday as he promised mass deportations in a dark speech.

Trump was at an event hosted by the National Rifle Association in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, promising another gun-friendly administration if he is re-elected.

But the moment in his speech that has been getting the most attention is his pledge to set off a massive deportation effort if he takes back the White House later this year.

"Within moments of my inauguration, we will begin the largest deportation operation in American history," he shared, garnering cheers from the audience.

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He then went on to tell a bizarre story after claiming that migrants "rush into the store, and they walk out with television sets."

"I mean, I saw one the other day walking out with a refrigerator," he quipped. "I said, 'he's a pretty strong guy.'"

As the 2024 race heats up, Trump has been notably more focused on immigrants and the southern border, which are hot-button topics for Republican voters.

While Trump and much of the Republican Party regularly blame President Joe Biden for failures in immigration policy, the current administration has arguable been far more aggressively anti-migrant than the previous one.

The GOP's presumptive presidential nominee for 2024 also freely admitted to having "killed" a recent bipartisan border security deal that would pour tens of billions of dollars into a draconian crackdown on border crossings.

It all has been a part of an escalation that reached something of a climax in December last year, when Trump said at a rally that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" – rhetoric that has been compared to that of Adolf Hitler.

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Some of the 77-year-old's closest allies are going even further.

In a November interview with far-right provocateur Charlie Kirk, Stephen Miller, a former speechwriter and advisor for Trump, revealed plans to dispatch law enforcement to "go around the country, arresting illegal immigrants in large-scale raids", and build "large-scale staging grounds near the border" that would serve as internment camps for those awaiting deportation.

Meanwhile, Trump faces 91 criminal charges and a mountain of other legal issues.