Democratic lawmakers have united in condemning US President Donald Trump as racist after he said that a group of progressive congresswomen should go back to the "crime infested places from which they came."

Although Trump didn't name who he was targeting, his message was almost certainly directed at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib — a band of recently elected Democrats known for their vocal opposition to Trump's policies.

Read more: US President Donald Trump claims he's 'not a racist' after controversial remark

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful Democrat in the lower chamber of Congress, said on Twitter that the comment "reaffirms" that Trump "has always been about making America white again."

Ocasio-Cortez said she was from the United States and swore allegiance to the country, adding that the president could not "conceive of an America that includes us."

Omar, Pressley and Tlaib and dozens of other Democratic lawmakers, senior party figures and presidential candidates also denounced the comment as racist and xenophobic in separate tweets. Republican lawmakers remained mostly silent.

Three of Trump's apparent targets — Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley and Tlaib — were born and raised in the United States. Omar was born in Somalia and moved to the US when she was 12 years old.

Trump has repeatedly been accused of racism as a candidate and during his presidency.

Since 2015, he has said many Mexicans are "rapists," called migration across the US-Mexican border an "infestation" and described some people attending a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia as "very fine people."

amp/se (AP, AFP)

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