Washington DC

Racist ad: Media organisations including Fox News, NBC and Facebook cancelled an advert put out by Donald Trump’s campaign in the run-up to Tuesday’s midterm elections after it was widely condemned as racist. The advert showed Luis Bracamontes (pictured), an undocumented migrant from Mexico, boasting about killing two California police officers in 2014, then switched to footage of the “migrant caravan” travelling through Mexico. Its slogan was: “Stop the caravan, vote Republican.” A longer version of the ad, tweeted by Trump, falsely claimed that the Democrats had let Bracamontes “into our country” and “let him stay”, and ended by asking: “Who else will they let in?”

Meanwhile, hundreds of the men, women and children who form the migrant caravan reached Mexico City this week. Having covered some 800 miles in four weeks, the migrants made their way to a sports stadium that has been converted by the local government into a temporary shelter big enough to accommodate more than 5,000 people. Last week, the Pentagon confirmed that it was sending 5,200 troops to the Mexican border at President Trump’s direction; the latter has claimed that the “invasion” poses a major security threat. Former president Barack Obama described President Trump’s response to the caravan (made up, he said, of “broke, hungry refugees”) as a “political stunt”, designed to rouse his right-wing support base ahead of this week’s elections.