President Trump said at a conference on sanctuary cities: “These are not people. These are animals.”

Shame on him. For the president of the United States to insinuate that immigration status or criminal record somehow determines humanity is not only appalling. It’s dangerous.

We’ve seen this kind of dehumanizing language before. We saw it during the Holocaust when the Nazis called Jews Untermenschen — subhumans. We saw it before the Rwandan genocide when the leader of the Hutu party called Tutsis “cockroaches.”

And we’ve seen it in our own country. Just last month, three extremists were found guilty of a bomb plot to kill Somali Muslims in Kansas. They, too, referred to them as “cockroaches.”

This kind of rhetoric is unacceptable from anyone. For it to come yet again from the mouth of the president is dangerous.