[Source: Reuters]

Minutes before going on stage for the first presidential debate on Thursday, Donald Trump received a phone call from the mother of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was killed in Houston this month, allegedly by two Venezuelan men in the U.S. illegally.

The mother, Alexis Nungaray, was returning a voicemail Trump had left earlier in the day when she was at her daughter’s funeral, a friend of the family, Victoria Galvan, who witnessed the call, told Reuters.

Nungaray’s body was found in a creek near her home on June 17, after her attackers allegedly took her under a bridge, tied her up, took her pants off and strangled her, according to police and prosecutors.

The suspects – Johan Jose Martinez Rangel, 22, and Franklin Jose Pena Ramos, 26 – had been detained by U.S. border authorities in Texas earlier this year but released pending a court appearance.

During the debate, Trump spoke of Nungaray’s case and the phone call as he hammered Biden on his immigration policies, accusing the Democrat of allowing murderers and rapists into the country.

Citing Nungaray’s case, he said: “This is horrible, what’s taken place … We’re literally an uncivilized country now.”

Trump’s attacks are from a well-thumbed playbook he has used repeatedly since first running for office in 2015 to cast immigrants illegally crossing the southern border as violent criminals.

He typically focuses on young, usually white, women allegedly killed by Hispanic assailants to drive home that message, eschewing cases that involve male victims.

His opponents accuse him of cynically exploiting grieving families to fuel his narrative that foreign-born, often Hispanic, arrivals are part of an invading army.