5 Biggest Lies Trump Tells about Immigration

 Trump and his GOP lackeys are fueling dangerous nativism 

Robert Reich, 

Some of you ask why I spend so much time and effort writing to you, the “converted,” rather than aim at people who disagree with us. My answer is that we are engaged in the fight of our lifetimes to uphold the fundamental ideals upon which this nation is based. Many of you can make use of data and arguments to reaffirm those ideals and help convince others who are wavering or still reachable. 

Take immigration, which is being demagogued by Trump and his Republican sycophants. 

Here are Trump Republicans’ five biggest lies about immigration, and the truth. 

1. They claim Biden doesn’t want to stem illegal immigration and has created an “open border.”

Rubbish. Since he took office, Biden has consistently asked for additional funding for border control. 

Republicans have just as consistently refused. They’re voting to cut Customs and Border Protection funding in spending bills and blocking passage of Biden’s $106 billion national security supplemental that includes border funding. 

2. They blame the drug crisis on illegal immigration.

Last Wednesday, at the southern border in Texas, Republican House Speaker Michael Johnson claimed “America is at a breaking point with record levels of illegal immigration. We have lethal drugs that are pouring into our country at record levels.”

Rubbish. While large amounts of fentanyl and other deadly drugs have been flowing into the United States from Mexico, 90% arrives through official ports of entry, not via immigrants illegally crossing the border. In fact, research by the conservative Cato Institute found that more than 86% of the people convicted of trafficking fentanyl across the border in 2021 were U.S. citizens.

3. They claim that undocumented immigrants are terrorists.

Johnson also charged that “312 suspects on the terrorist watch list that have been apprehended — we have no idea how many terrorists have come into the country and set up terrorism cells across the nation.”

Baloney. America’s southern border has not been an entry point for terrorists. For almost a half-century, no American has been killed or injured in a terrorist attack in the United States that involved someone who crossed the border illegally. 

Johnson’s number comes from government data showing that from October 2020 to November 2023, 312 migrants — out of more than 6.2 million who crossed the southern border during these years — matched names on the terrorist watch list. It’s unclear how many were actual matches and whether the FBI considered them national security threats (the watch list includes family relations of terrorist suspects, many of whom are not considered to be involved in terrorist activity).

Republican Representative Mark Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said that FBI “Director Wray admitted before my committee the other day … that with the border wide open and a war in Israel, Hamas can just walk right in. That’s the director of the FBI. He fears for his own agents. It’s clear this is intentional.”

Alarmist rubbish. At that November 15 hearing, after Green asked Wray whether people on the terrorism watch list could be among those who entered the country without detection, Wray replied that there was no way to know. When Green then asked whether Wray could guarantee that Hamas wasn’t among them, Wray said, “What I can tell you is that our 56 joint terrorism task forces are working their tails off to make sure that they suss out and identify potential terrorist suspects, whether they’re on the watch list or not.”

LULAC Condemns Trump and Republican Plan

 

LULAC SLAMS DONALD TRUMP'S RACIST AND EXTREME ANTI-IMMIGRANT PLANS AS INHUMANE AND UNCHRISTIAN  Nation's Oldest and Largest Latino Civil Rights Organization Demands Total Rejection by Faith-Based Groups and Self-Described American Patriots

 

"LULAC rejects in the strongest possible language the detestable and sick plans Trump is using in his fear-mongering quest for the White House," says Domingo Garcia, LULAC national president. "His vitriolic hate-filled speeches only inflame the deepest, most deranged hatred against immigrant Latinos and people of color. LULAC calls upon every American who believes we are a nation of immigrants and diversity to turn away from Trump's race-baiting tribal politics as dangerous. We have seen in history what happened when race-baiting, anti-Semitic, immigrant scapegoating are left unchallenged by good men and women." The 2024 election holds ominous implications for the Latino community as Trump seeks to reimplement policies from his first term, including the so-called Muslim ban and the utilization of Title 42 to reject asylum seekers. Trump intends to deport millions of immigrants, many of whom have been here for over twenty years. He says he will detain them in large concentration camps while awaiting expulsion. This image is a stark reminder of the inhumane policies that marked his previous tenure and now make up his core promise for the future. LULAC opposes any campaigning that attacks the Latino community. "We challenge candidates to stand on issues and stop the dog whistles that play to the worst stereotypes of millions of hard-working, law-abiding men, women, and children," adds Garcia. "The alarming rhetoric from the Republican field, advocating bombing Mexico and using deadly force against migrants, is a dangerous shift away from rational discourse and humane solutions." LULAC supports securing the border, reforming our immigration system to allow more legal immigration, and going after cartels and human traffickers. LULAC will be organizing large-scale Latino voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives in swing states to deliver un voto de castigo or punishment vote against the politics of hate and racism. LULAC calls upon faith-based groups and self-described American patriots to reject Trump's inhumane and un-Christian plans. The organization urges Americans to embrace a discourse centered on issues rather than divisive tactics perpetuating harmful stereotypes. As the nation's oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization, LULAC remains steadfast in its commitment to defending the rights and dignity of all, irrespective of their background or immigration status.

 

 About LULAC

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights volunteer-based organization that empowers Hispanic Americans and builds strong Latino communities. Headquartered in Washington, DC, with 1,000 councils around the United States and Puerto Rico, LULAC’s programs, services and advocacy address the most important issues for Latinos, meeting critical needs of today and the future. For more information, visit www.LULAC.org.

Trump Misleads on National TV

WASHINGTON — President Trump doubled down on one of the biggest gambles of his presidency on Tuesday night with a televised appeal to pressure Congress into paying for his long-promised border wall even at the cost of leaving the government partially closed until lawmakers give in.

Embarking on a strategy that he himself privately disparaged as unlikely to work, Mr. Trump devoted the first prime-time Oval Office address of his presidency to his proposed barrier in hopes of enlisting public support in an ideological and political conflict that has shut the doors of many federal agencies for 18 days.

In a nine-minute speech that made no new arguments but included multiple misleading assertions, the president sought to recast the situation at the Mexican border as a “humanitarian crisis” and opted against declaring a national emergency to bypass Congress, which he had threatened to do, at least for now. But he excoriated Democrats for blocking the wall, accusing them of hypocrisy and exposing the country to criminal immigrants.

But his alarming description of a “crisis” at the border has raised credibility questions. While experts agree there are serious problems to address, migrant border crossings have actually been declining for nearly two decades. The majority of heroin enters the United States through legal ports of entry, not through open areas of the border. And the State Department said in a recent report that there is “no credible evidence” that terrorist groups had sent operatives to enter the United States through Mexico.

More deception.  https://www.vox.com/2019/1/8/18173721/trump-border-facts-truth-speech-lying

Milbank- Arizona governor has lost her head

By Dana Milbank

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Jan Brewer has lost her head.

The Arizona governor, seemingly determined to repel every last tourist dollar from her pariah state, has sounded a new alarm about border violence. "Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded," she announced on local television.

Ay, caramba! Those dark-skinned foreigners are now severing the heads of fair-haired Americans? Maybe they're also scalping them or shrinking them or putting them on a spike.

But those in fear of losing parts north of the neckline can relax. There's not a follicle of evidence to support Brewer's claim.

The Arizona Guardian Web site checked with medical examiners in Arizona's border counties, and the coroners said they had never seen an immigration-related beheading. I called and e-mailed Brewer's press office requesting documentation of decapitation; no reply.

Brewer's mindlessness about headlessness is just one of the immigration falsehoods being spread by Arizona politicians. Border violence on the rise? Phoenix becoming the world's No. 2 kidnapping capital? Illegal immigrants responsible for most police killings? The majority of those crossing the border are drug mules? All wrong.

This matters, because it means the entire premise of the Arizona immigration law is a fallacy. Arizona officials say they've had to step in because federal officials aren't doing enough to stem increasing border violence. The scary claims of violence, in turn, explain why the American public supports the Arizona crackdown.