ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Hundreds of supporters of former President Donald Trump lined the streets of Allentown Tuesday morning, creating a sea of red hats and flags outside a sports arena downtown.

Just a few blocks away, Democrats slammed Trump inside a campaign office for his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. And a progressive organization that advocates for Latinos planned to protest Trump’s evening rally following crude remarks made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe about Puerto Rico at a Sunday event that drew national outrage.

It all made for a what’s amounted to a city-halting scene in Allentown, the third-largest city in Pennsylvania, where streets are shut down for blocks around the rally site and schools are closed for the day. Media are descending on the city, which is majority Latino and home to more than 34,000 Puerto Ricans, following the rally speaker’s Sunday remark that the territory is a “floating island of garbage.”

The tensions come with one week left until Election Day, as Trump and Harris remain neck-and-neck in battleground Pennsylvania, and as Trump has looked to growing support in majority Latino cities — including Allentown, which sits in the bellwether Lehigh Valley — to help deliver him the commonwealth.

Prior to the rally, Trump was expected to take part in a roundtable discussion on senior citizens’ issues in Delaware County on Tuesday afternoon alongside former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Allentown Mayor Matthew Tuerk, a Democrat who supports Harris and appeared at a news conference Tuesday alongside actor and West Wing president Martin Sheen to stump for Harris, said the city has mobilized its entire police force to patrol the area.

“We’re working closely with the Secret Service to make sure there’s no interruption to people’s peaceful enjoyment of downtown,” he said. Tuerk noted a planned protest will take place about two blocks away from the site of the Trump rally, and that he expects both crowds to remain peaceful.

The demonstration is being organized by Make the Road Action PA, a social-justice organization focused on Latino communities in Allentown, Reading, Philadelphia, and Hazleton.

Olga Burgos, a Make the Road Action PA member, said Hinchcliffe’s racist remarks about Puerto Rico Sunday were “just the latest in a decades-long spring of vile attacks from Trump and his inner circle against Black and brown Americans.”

“Latine voters hold the key to this election,” Burgos said. “We will get to decide who wields power in the White House, and whose terrifying and destructive policies will go in the dustbin of history. We don’t plan to lose.”

The Trump campaign has tried to distance itself from Hinchcliffe’s remarks, saying the joke “does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.” Trump told ABC News Tuesday that he didn’t know the comedian and insisted he hadn’t heard the remarks.

“I don’t know him, someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is,” Trump said.

Outside the PPL Center where the rally is taking place, vendors hawked T-shirts and a man in a Trump mask performed an interpretive dance. Hundreds of supporters stood in line for hours to snag a good seat inside.

Nadine Ritter, of Emmaus, who wore a red, white and blue shirt with Trump’s likeness on the front and back, arrived at 5 a.m. It’ll be her third Trump rally, and she said she figured this would be her last chance to see the former president campaign in Pennsylvania ahead of Election Day.

She said she’s nervous in the campaign’s final days, but confident Trump can eke out a win in Pennsylvania and take the White House.

“I think we’re gonna go red,” she said.

©2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC. Visit at inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.