How Trump Uses Vitriol for Migrants to Sideline Other Issues
"Former President Donald J. Trump has long tried to stoke fear about immigration. Now, he’s doubling down as the presidential race heats up.
For years, former President Donald J. Trump has tried to stir up fears about immigrants with claims of caravans full of criminals and rapists heading toward America’s southern border.
In Tuesday night’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he doubled down on the vitriol, promoting a debunked conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants were killing Americans’ house pets and eating them for dinner.
Mr. Trump’s political goals appear to be the same as they always have been: to stoke anger and give people someone to blame for their misfortunes.
But the debate highlighted how Mr. Trump has escalated his assaults on immigrants in the 2024 presidential campaign, and how he uses the issue to overshadow other topics, including tariffs or the economy. Mr. Trump’s first mention of “dangerous” migrants on Tuesday night came just 59 seconds into his first answer — one about the future of the economy.
For her part, the vice president appeared unwilling to get into a back-and-forth on the issue, despite the fact that illegal border crossings have dropped dramatically following tough measures ordered by President Biden. An executive order he signed in June curbed people’s right to seek asylum, among other restrictions.
In July, the number of arrests at the southern border stood at just over 56,000, the lowest since the record figures in December, when around 250,000 migrants crossed.
Ms. Harris noted that Mr. Trump had urged Republicans to kill a bipartisan immigration bill that would have enhanced border security. But she has appeared to embrace a strategy in which she simply lets the former president put his views about immigrants on display for everyone to see — evidence of her broader claim that he embraces outlandish ideas.
When the moderator of the debate challenged Mr. Trump about the claim that migrants are eating pets, the former president insisted: “People on television say, ‘My dog was taken and used for food.’” (Local officials have found no evidence, credible reports or specific claimsof pets being harmed by Haitian residents.)
When it was her turn, Ms. Harris said of Mr. Trump, “Talk about extreme.”
In some ways, Mr. Trump’s embrace of even more extreme imagery about immigrants is a response to a broader shift in the Democratic Party over the past several years. Reacting to a major surge at the border in 2022 and 2023, Democratic mayors and governors complained loudly about the impact of migrants on their cities and openly demanded stricter enforcement of immigration laws.
“Let me tell you something, New Yorkers, never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to — I don’t see an ending to this,” Eric Adams, the Democratic mayor of New York, said a year ago, referring to a huge influx of poor migrants into his community. “This issue will destroy New York City.”
Those complaints prompted Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris to support tough new restrictions at the border, including some that were similar to the anti-immigrant measures Mr. Trump had sought to put in place during his presidency. Now, Mr. Trump is going even further, calling for mass deportations and saying that American cities have already succumbed to the “invasion” he long predicted.
In effect, both political parties in the United States have shifted to the right, leaving many immigrant rights activists to complain that the country is abandoning its longstanding role as the protector of displaced people around the world.
Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris have responded to that criticism by expanding legal opportunities for immigration into the United States even as they have cracked down on people who try to cross the border without documentation by evading the established ports of entry along the Mexican border.
Mr. Trump’s allies say his tough stance on the border is a winning strategy.
“It plays to his strength,” said Ron Vitiello, former head of U.S. Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration. “You know he’s going to fix this problem if elected like he did last time.”
Amanda Baran, who worked as a homeland security official during the Biden administration, said Mr. Trump had intensified his language for political purposes instead of trying to find ways to fix what many agree is a badly broken immigration system.
“He would rather stir up fear by talking about mass deportations and degrading immigrants with lies and racist tropes,” she said.
Federal, state and local officials have all rejected the idea that millions of criminals have been let into the country. Programs like the one that allows Haitians to live in the United States temporarily require national security and criminal vetting before they are approved to enter the country.
Mr. Trump has generally dodged or ignored questions about the specifics of his plans to remove millions of people from the country — how much they would cost, how they would work and exactly whom they would target.
Asked during Tuesday’s debate about his promise to undertake “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” Mr. Trump refused to offer any specifics and instead repeated his unfounded claim that Venezuela’s crime rate has plunged because “they’ve taken their criminals off the street and they’ve given them to her to put into our country,” referring to Ms. Harris.
No official government information corroborates Mr. Trump’s assertions, including claims that crime in Venezuela has declined by 67 percent; at other times he has said it has dropped 72 percent. Whatever decline may have occurred is not related to the purge of criminals, according to a report by an independent group, the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence.
Democrats are betting that Mr. Trump’s dark language will turn voters off, as it appeared to do when Republican lawmakers lost after running similar ads during the midterm elections of 2018 and 2022.
But many Republicans continue to see immigration as a winning issue this presidential election. Mr. Trump and his allies have continued to depict dystopian conditions at the southern border in Congress, statehouses and campaign ads, and escalated their use of the term “invasion” to describe migration, despite the language being tied to mass shootings in Pittsburgh, Pa.; El Paso, Texas; and Buffalo, N.Y.
Immigration Hub, a national group that backs progressive immigration policies, on Wednesday reported data from AdImpact, an ad tracking firm, that showed Democratic spending on television advertisements focused on the issue had grown fourfold to nearly $24.6 million in August from $6.1 million in July.
Spending on such ads by Republican and other conservative groups still dwarfed that figure, nearly tripling to $106 million in August, compared with $37 million the prior month.
“For too long, Democrats have ceded the issue, giving away a critical advantage,” Beatriz Lopez, Immigration Hub’s deputy director and chief political officer, said in a statement. “Immigration is an asset; not a political loser for Democrats.”
Michael D. Shear is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Biden and his administration. He has reported on politics for more than 30 years. More about Michael D. Shear
Jazmine Ulloa is a national politics reporter for The Times, covering the 2024 presidential campaign. She is based in Washington. More about Jazmine Ulloa
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