LAS VEGAS — Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Sun­day aimed for fur­ther inroads with Lati­nos who could prove vital in close­ly con­test­ed states that could deter­mine the White House race, pro­mot­ing eco­nom­ic gains they made before the coro­n­avirus pandemic.

Though Trump has made scores of inflam­ma­to­ry and deroga­to­ry com­ments about Lati­nos, his cam­paign is grow­ing con­fi­dent that he has won some sup­port that could help in Flori­da, Ari­zona and Neva­da, his tar­get this week­end. He host­ed a round­table dis­cus­sion with Lati­nos in Las Vegas on Sun­day after­noon before a night­time ral­ly, his first indoors since one in Tul­sa, Okla­homa, was blamed for a surge of coro­n­avirus infections.

Win­ning sup­port from Lati­nos has been an uphill climb for Trump, whose hard-line immi­gra­tion poli­cies and some­times vir­u­lent depic­tion of immi­grants have alien­at­ed many Hispanics.

In the first moments of his 2016 cam­paign, he declared that many Mex­i­can immi­grants were “rapists.” He has drawn crit­i­cism for his tepid response to a hur­ri­cane that rav­aged Puer­to Rico, his polices to sep­a­rate chil­dren from their fam­i­lies at the U.S.-Mexico bor­der and his efforts to dis­man­tle an Oba­ma-era pro­gram that allows young immi­grants liv­ing in the coun­try ille­gal­ly who were brought here as chil­dren to remain in the U.S.

“They under­stand the sit­u­a­tion at the south­ern bor­der. They want peo­ple to come in, and so do I, but they want them to do it legal­ly,” Trump told a small group of sup­port­ers in Las Vegas. “While Joe Biden has failed, I have deliv­ered for Latinos.”

There is increas­ing con­cern about Democ­rats that their nom­i­nee, the for­mer vice pres­i­dent, has not done enough to court Lati­no vot­ers. His run­ning mate, Cal­i­for­nia Sen. Sen. Kamala Har­ris, did lit­tle to sway Florida’s boom­ing and polit­i­cal­ly influ­en­tial Lati­no pop­u­la­tion dur­ing a stop there this past week. Biden has not set foot in Ari­zona or Neva­da dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, which he has main­ly con­duct­ed vir­tu­al­ly because of the coronavirus.

Trump tai­lored his pitch to Lati­nos on Sun­day, not­ing their low unem­ploy­ment rate before COVID-19 reached Amer­i­can shores and affirm­ing his anti-abor­tion stance. He again ham­mered home his recent push on law and order, say­ing that recent vio­lence in Amer­i­can cities endan­gered Latinos.

“Sleepy Joe Biden has spent 47 years in pol­i­tics being ter­ri­ble to His­pan­ics. Now he is rely­ing on Cas­tro lover Bernie Sanders to help him out,” Trump tweet­ed Sun­day. “That won’t work!”

Sanders, a Ver­mont sen­a­tor who ran against Biden in the pri­ma­ry but lat­er endorsed his rival, took heat ear­li­er this year for a tele­vi­sion inter­view in which he laud­ed Fidel Cas­tro for a lit­er­a­cy pro­gram and assert­ed that it was “unfair to sim­ply say every­thing is bad” in Cuba.

Esti­mates from the Pew Research Cen­ter and AP Vote­Cast show that about 3 in 10 Lati­no vot­ers sup­port­ed Trump in 2016 and Repub­li­can can­di­dates in 2018. That’s also con­sis­tent with long-term trends in par­ty iden­ti­fi­ca­tion among Lati­no vot­ers, accord­ing to Pew.

Like Ari­zona and Neva­da, Flori­da has a het­ero­ge­neous pop­u­la­tion, but His­pan­ic vot­ers there tend to be some­what more Repub­li­can-lean­ing than His­pan­ic vot­ers nation­wide because of the state’s Cuban Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion. A recent Flori­da poll shows sup­port from Lati­nos about even between Trump and Biden.

Nation­al­ly, lit­tle pub­lic polling is avail­able to mea­sure the opin­ions of Lati­no vot­ers this year and whether they dif­fer from four years ago. The Biden cam­paign has con­sis­tent­ly denounced Trump’s poli­cies as hurt­ing Lati­no immi­grants and workers.

The push for Lati­nos comes dur­ing a West­ern swing in which Trump has looked to expand his paths to vic­to­ry while unleash­ing a tor­rent of unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claims that Democ­rats were try­ing to steal the election.

After hold­ing a pair of fundrais­ers in the Las Vegas area on Sun­day, expect­ed to raise $18 mil­lion, Trump will hold an indoor ral­ly in the ware­house of a man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in near­by Hen­der­son. After aban­don­ing ral­lies for months when the pan­dem­ic first arrived, Trump sched­uled one in June in a Tul­sa are­na that fea­tured seas of emp­ty seats and, per local offi­cials, prompt­ed a spike in cases.

Rec­og­niz­ing that many sup­port­ers were uncom­fort­able to gath­er in a large group indoors, where the virus spreads more eas­i­ly, the Trump cam­paign shift­ed to hold­ing small­er, out­door ral­lies, usu­al­ly at air­plane hang­ers. But those ral­lies have grown in size in recent weeks, with lit­tle social dis­tanc­ing and few masks.

And on Sun­day, they return indoors, in part as a nod to the Las Vegas heat. Tem­per­a­ture checks will giv­en to all upon entrance while masks will be encour­aged but not mandated.

“If you can join tens of thou­sands of peo­ple protest­ing in the streets, gam­ble in a casi­no, or burn down small busi­ness­es in riots, you can gath­er peace­ful­ly under the 1st Amend­ment to hear from the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States,” cam­paign com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor Tim Mur­taugh said.

Neva­da Gov. Steve Siso­lak has lim­it­ed in-per­son gath­er­ings indoors and out­doors to 50 peo­ple since May, a rec­om­men­da­tion based on White House reopen­ing guide­lines. Trump defied local author­i­ties the night before by hold­ing a ral­ly in tiny Min­den after his ini­tial plan for such a gath­er­ing in Reno was stopped out of con­cern it would have vio­lat­ed coro­n­avirus health guidelines.

In 90-plus min­utes of griev­ances and attacks before sup­port­ers, Trump charged that the state’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor tried to block him and repeat­ed his false claim that mail-in bal­lots would taint the elec­tion result.

Trump nar­row­ly lost Neva­da in 2016 to Demo­c­rat Hillary Clin­ton, and the state has trend­ed fur­ther toward the Democ­rats in the past decade. But Trump’s cam­paign has built its ground game to turn out vot­er while Democ­rats, by con­trast, have large­ly relied on vir­tu­al cam­paign efforts dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, save for the casi­no work­ers’ Culi­nary Union, which has sent work­ers door to door.

After Neva­da, Trump planned to vis­it Cal­i­for­nia on Mon­day for a brief­ing on the dev­as­tat­ing wild­fires rac­ing through the region. He has large­ly been silent on the blazes. After­ward, he’ll head to Ari­zona, a state his cam­paign fears may be slip­ping away, where he will host anoth­er event aimed at Latinos.