With Control of Congress at Stake, Trump Reprises a Favorite Theme: Fear Immigrants

The immigration video, which relies solely on news clips and stock footage, includes courtroom footage of Luis Bracamontes, a twice-deported Mexican immigrant sentenced to death this year for killing two California law enforcement officers. It was meant to speak to Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant base, which rallied behind his racially tinged messages starting with his 2015 speech announcing his campaign, when he singled out Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists.

“You put an ad out like that, that gets a lot of press and it reaches one group of people — the base — while the other ad is going after a totally different group of independent Republicans,” said Jim Innocenzi, a Republican media strategist.

Two people close to Mr. Trump declined to say whether it was made by the White House video unit or someone on the campaign. But one White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that it had been in the works for several days, and was released on Wednesday as a distraction to change the cable television chyrons from coverage of the Pittsburgh synagogue attack and the pipe bombs mailed to Mr. Trump’s political critics.

While Mr. Trump’s overt racial appeals on immigration have made some of his advisers uncomfortable, most recognize that the issue resonates deeply with the Republican base, and did long before the president showed up as a candidate. Mr. Trump has complained bitterly for days to advisers that he no longer had control of the message and that Republicans had seen their momentum thwarted for the midterms.

The immigration video provoked such outrage that it spawned a flood of news coverage — or, in the parlance of political consultants, “earned media,” meaning the Mr. Trump did not have to spend any money to get public attention for it. It drew charges of racism and comparisons to the infamous Willie Horton ad produced by supporters of George Bush during the 1988 election. Mr. Trump pinned the video to his Twitter feed, ensuring that it would be the first thing his 55.5 million followers would see, and as of Thursday afternoon, it had 3.42 million views.

“These days, with everything being so segmented, you can reach so many different audiences so many different ways, and in this case, my guess is this is exactly the reaction they were looking for,” Mr. Innocenzi said, referring to the outraged responses that have driven news coverage of the immigration ad. “It accomplished the goal.”