Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Great Bay Community College, Thursday, Feb. 4, 2016, in Portsmouth, N.H. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
A group of immigration hecklers took on presidential candidate Donald Trump during a campaign event in New Hampshire on Thursday.
Trump was taking questions at the historic Exeter Town Hall building in Exeter, where his supporters were packed in like sardines. Also in the mosh pit, it turned out, were a few opponents of the candidates' position on immigration.
One young woman began asking the Republican candidate for president a question by identifying herself as being from Southern California.
“What are you doing here?” Trump asked. “Are you a liberal Democrat, by any chance?”
After the woman mentioned that immigrants “do the work that nobody else wants to do and for a lot less,” the real estate tycoon asked, "Who told you to be here? Bernie [Sanders]?"
“This is a Bernie plant,” Trump said, referring to Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. “This is a Bernie plant.”
Another audience member then yelled out that immigrants living in the country illegally are the “backbone of this country.”
"Illegal immigrants are the backbone of our country? I don't think so, darling," the candidate said in response to the new heckler.
He went on, "You know what the backbone of our country is? People that came here, and they came here legally ... and they worked their asses off and they made the country great."
Trump has been the front-runner in the GOP race ever since the summer, when he began talking about illegal immigration and how he would build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico to stop the flow of undocumented migrants.
On Monday, he came in second at the Iowa caucuses to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and barely finished ahead of the third-place finisher Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida – the first real blow to Trump’s campaign since he announced his candidacy in June.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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