Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) is coming out swinging against former President Donald Trump‘s decision to host a rally in the Bronx on Thursday, arguing that the borough has no “greater enemy” than Trump.

Trump’s campaign announced on Friday that the rally would take place at Crotona Park, a park just blocks away from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez‘s (D-NY) district boundary. The rally, Trump’s first in the state since 2016, is the latest move by the former president as he seeks to flip New York red in the 2024 election.

Torres, who represents the 15th Congressional District that includes the Bronx, denounced the rally on Friday and again in a similar statement to Fox News Digital on Monday.

“The South Bronx has no greater enemy than Donald Trump, who is on a mission to dismantle the social safety net on which Bronx families depend for their survival,” Torres told the outlet. “Trump is and has always been a fraud. The South Bronx — the most Democratic area in the nation — will not buy the snake oil that he is selling.”

In a statement announcing the rally, Trump’s campaign highlighted the former president’s previous residency in the Empire State until he moved his permanent residence to Mar-a-Lago in Florida in 2019. The campaign played on the rising crime rates, the influx of illegal immigrants from the southern border, and the country’s high inflation that serve as thorns in President Joe Biden’s side as he seeks to win reelection this fall.

“The Empire State, a place near to President Trump’s heart, has been decimated by Biden,” Trump’s campaign said Friday. “President Trump will ease the financial pressures placed on households and re-establish law and order in New York! We can Make America Great Again by tackling lawlessness head-on, ceasing the endless flow of illegal immigrants across our southern border, and reversing the detrimental effects of inflation by restoring people’s wealth.”

Another roadblock Biden must overcome is his loss of support among black voters — a situation Trump could benefit from, particularly in an area such as the Bronx, which in the 2020 census marked a voting-age population of 40.6% black and 53.5% Hispanic. The census in 2022 found the black and Hispanic populations increased to 44.3% and 56.6%, respectively.

In 2016, Trump only secured 8% of the vote in the New York congressional district against Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In 2020, his popularity rose slightly to earning 14.7% of the Bronx vote against Biden.

However, polls have indicated that while Biden continues to lead Trump among black voters, the president’s support from that key demographic has slipped since entering office in 2021. Black voters were critical in helping Biden secure narrow victories in critical battleground states in 2020 — and since the beginning of 2024, Biden’s allies have worried that it might be too little, too late to renew support among the voting bloc.

A Republican presidential candidate has not won more than 12% of the black vote in nearly 50 years. Conversely, no Democratic presidential candidate since the civil rights era has earned less than 80% of the black vote.

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Biden’s campaign is launching several concerted efforts to try and mend his relationships with black voters. On Friday, Biden commemorated the 70th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education desegregation ruling by delivering remarks at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

Over the weekend, the president traveled to Atlanta for a series of events focusing on interacting with the black community. He met with the plaintiffs and family members from Brown v. Board of Education earlier last week, hosted the presidents of the “Divine Nine” (a group of historically black fraternities and sororities) on Friday afternoon, and gave the keynote address at Morehouse College on Sunday.

The Washington Examiner reached out to Trump’s campaign for comment.