Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Feb. 29 at a stopover at the U. S. -Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Video shared through former President Donald Trump features music from horror movies and images of migrants allegedly entering the U. S. from countries including Cameroon, Afghanistan and China. Shots of tattooed men and violent crime videos are contrasted with close-ups. of other people waving and wrapping themselves in American flags.
“They’re coming in the thousands,” Trump says in the video posted on his social media site. “We will protect our borders and repair sovereignty.
In his speeches and online posts, Trump has stepped up his anti-immigration rhetoric as he runs for the White House for a third time, portraying immigrants as harmful criminals who “poison the blood” of America. and national identity, their messages depend on lies about migration. But it resonates with many of his core supporters over the past decade, when “let’s build the wall” slogans began to echo at his rallies.
President Joe Biden and his allies are discussing the border in very different ways. The Democrat describes the scenario as a political dispute in which Congress can and is hitting Republicans in Washington for pulling out of a border security deal after facing a complaint from Trump.
But in a sign of potential concern for Biden, Trump’s message turns out to resonate with key elements of the Democratic coalition that Biden will have to convince next November.
About two-thirds of Americans now disapprove of Biden’s handling of border security, totaling about four in 10 Democrats, 55 of Black adults and 73 of Hispanic adults, according to a 2017 poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 45 percent of Americans describe the situation as a crisis, while 32 percent consider it a serious problem.
Vetress Boyce, a Chicago-based racial justice activist, was among those who expressed frustration with Biden’s immigration policies and the city’s technique as it tries to house newly arrived immigrants. He argued that Democrats focus on economic investments in Black communities, not newcomers.
“They send us other people who are starving, the same way that other Black people are starving in this country. They send us other people who need to escape situations and come here in search of a better way of life when those who are here have been suffering for over a hundred years,” Boyce said. “This recipe is a disastrous mix. It’s a crisis waiting to happen.
Gracie Martinez is a 52-year-old Hispanic small business owner from Eagle Pass, Texas, the border city Trump visited in February when he and Biden took day trips to the state. Martinez said he once voted for former President Barack Obama and is still a Democrat, but now supports Trump, most commonly because of the border.
“It’s horrible,” he says. There are tons and tons of other people and they give them medical care, cash and phones,” he said, lamenting that those who have gone through the legal immigration formula are treated worse.
Priscilla Hesles, 55, an instructor who lives in Eagle Pass, Texas, described the existing as “almost excessive” that has replaced the city.
“We don’t know where they’re hiding. We don’t know where they’ve infiltrated or where they’re coming from,” said Hesles, who said she used to walk at night to a local church but stopped after being caught. shaken by an encounter with an organization of men who, according to her, were immigrants.
Immigration will almost in fact be one of the central issues in the November election, and both sides will spend the next six months trying to portray the other as it relates to border security.
The president’s re-election crusade recently introduced a $30 million ad crusade for Latino audiences in key states, including a virtual ad in English and Spanish highlighting Trump’s interpretation of Mexican immigrants as “criminals” and “rapists. “
The White House has also been considering a series of executive actions that could particularly tighten restrictions on immigration, bypassing Congress after it failed to pass Biden’s bipartisan deal.
“Trump is a self-looking con man,” said Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz. “We’ll let the electorate know in November. “
Trump will campaign Tuesday in Wisconsin and Michigan this week, where he is expected to face Biden on immigration. His campaign has said his occasion in Grand Rapids, in western Michigan, will focus on what he claims is “Biden’s border bloodbath. “
The former president calls the recent record-breaking arrests at southwest border crossings an Democrat-orchestrated “invasion” of the very fabric of the United States. Trump accuses Biden of intentionally allowing would-be criminals and terrorists to enter the country unchecked, going so far as to claim that the president is involved in a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America. “
He also portrays immigrants (many of whom are women and young people fleeing poverty and violence) as “poisoning the blood” of America with drugs and disease and claimed that some are “not people. “Experts who examine extremism warn against dehumanizing language to describe immigrants.
There is no evidence that foreign governments are emptying their prisons or intellectual asylums, as Trump claims. And while conservative media politics have been governed through several heinous and high-profile crimes allegedly committed illegally through others in the country, the most recent FBI statistics show that violent crime in the U. S. is on the rise. U. S. inflation rates declined further last year, continuing a downward trend after a pandemic era.
Studies have also shown that other people living in the country illegally are less likely than native-born Americans to have been arrested for violent, drug-related, and property crimes.
“The last few months have shown a transparent shift in political support,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the migrant resettlement organization Global Refuge and a former Obama administration and State Department official.
“It has to do with the rhetoric of the last few years,” he said, “and simply this dynamic of being overtaken by strong and excessive xenophobic rhetoric that has not been countered by truth and facts on the ground. “
Part of what makes the border such an important factor is that its impact is felt far from the border.
Trump’s allies, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, have used state-funded buses to send more than 100,000 immigrants to Democratic-led cities such as New York, Denver and Chicago, where Democrats will hold this summer’s convention. Billed as a publicity gimmick, the influx has taken a toll on city budgets and left local leaders scrambling to provide emergency housing and medical care to new immigrant groups.
Local media coverage, on the other hand, has been negative. Viewers saw immigrants accused of everything from a series of gang-related robberies in New Jersey to break-ins targeting retail establishments in suburban Philadelphia to measles cases in parts of Arizona. and Illinois.
Abbott deployed the Texas National Guard to the border, placed barbed wires along parts of the Rio Grande in defiance of U. S. Supreme Court orders, and argued that his state could enforce its own immigration laws.
Some far-right members have begun calling Abbott’s moves the first salvo of a looming civil war. And Russia has also helped spread and magnify misleading and inflammatory content about U. S. immigration and border security as a component of its broader efforts to polarize Americans. The company Logicically, which tracks Russian disinformation, found that online influencers and social media accounts linked to the Kremlin have seized on the idea of a new civil war and efforts by states like Texas to secede from the union.
Amy Cooter, who directs studies at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, fears that the existing wave of communication about the civil war will only increase as the election approaches. So far, this has been limited to far-right discussion forums. But immigration is cause for enough fear in general that its political strength is intensifying, Cooter said.
“Non-extremist Americans are also concerned about this,” he said. “It’s about the culture and belief of who is American. “
Meanwhile, there are others like Rudy Menchaca, an Eagle Pass bar owner who also works for a company that imports Corona beer from Mexico and blames the riots at the border for hurting business.
Menchaca is the type of Hispanic voter Biden is counting on for his reelection bid. The 27-year-old said he had never been a fan of Trump’s rhetoric and the way he portrayed Hispanics and Mexicans. “We’re not all like that,” he said.
But he also said he was sympathetic to the idea of supporting the former president because of the truth on the ground.