Trump-backed GOP Senate candidate aims to flip Dem-held seat in crucial battleground state

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - Mike Rogers says 'a weak and porous southern border' is fueling crime in his state. Rogers, a former FBI special agent who later served as House Intelligence Committee chair during his tenure in Congress and who is now running for the Republican Senate nomination in battleground Michigan, tells Fox News Digital that the top issues in his campaign are crime, the border, security and 'the economy, which is in the tank.

Rogers spoke to Fox News Digital minutes before he and other Republican leaders and law enforcement officials joined former President Donald Trump at a roundtable discussion and stood behind him at an ensuing campaign event where the presumptive GOP presidential nominee targeted President Biden over crime and the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. 'We’ve had minors solicited by illegal immigrants not too far from here.

The Trump visit came in the wake of the March 22 murder of Garcia, a 25-year-old woman allegedly killed by an illegal immigrant who had been deported to Mexico in 2020 but returned to the U.S. Garcia's death - her body was discovered alongside a road in Grand Rapids - has dominated local conservative talk radio and social media. Police say Garcia was in a romantic relationship with the suspect, Brandon Ortiz-Vite, who told authorities he shot her multiple times.

He returned to the campaign trail in late 2022 and early 2023, as he flirted with a long-shot Republican presidential nomination run, road-testing his message during stops in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, the four early voting states in the GOP nomination race. And part of his message was that Trump's time leading the party had passed.

Rogers, in his Fox News Digital interview, emphasized that 'Donald Trump is the right person at the right time to fix some huge problems for this country.' As he mulled a presidential run, Rogers was clear in rejecting Trump’s repeated unproven claims that his 2020 election loss to President Biden was due to a 'rigged' election that was 'stolen.' Asked how he squared his past criticism with his current backing of Trump, Rogers said 'politics are like family fights.

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