WASHINGTON (AP) — A video shared by former President Donald Trump includes music from a horror movie and footage of immigrants allegedly entering the United States from countries including Cameroon, Afghanistan and China. Photos of tattooed men and videos of violent crimes are set against close-ups of people waving and wrapping American flags.
“They're coming by the thousands,” Trump said in a video posted to his social media site. “We will protect our borders. And we will restore our sovereignty.”
President Trump, who is seeking his third White House, has stepped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric in speeches and online posts, portraying immigrants as dangerous criminals who “stain the blood” of America. His messages, which strike at the nation's deepest fault lines regarding racial and national identity, often rely on falsehoods about immigration. But what resonates with many of his core supporters goes back a decade, when his rallies began chanting “Build the wall.”
President Joe Biden and his allies are having a very different discussion about the border. Democrats say the situation is a policy dispute that Congress can resolve and blame Republicans in Washington for backing away from a border security deal after criticism from President Trump.
But in a potentially worrying sign for Biden, President Trump's message appears to resonate with key elements of the Democratic coalition that Biden needs to win this November.
According to a 2016 poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, about two-thirds of Americans currently disapprove of Biden's handling of border security, including 10 Democrats. 4 people, 55% of black adults, and 73% of Hispanic adults. march.
A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 45% of Americans described the situation as a crisis, and another 32% said it was a major problem.
Vetress Boyce, a Chicago-based racial justice activist, was among those who expressed dissatisfaction with Biden's immigration policies and the city's efforts to protect new arrivals. She argued that Democrats should focus on economic investments in black communities rather than newcomers.
“They are sending us people who are starving, just like black people are starving in this country. , sending us people who want to come here for a better lifestyle,” Boyce said. “That recipe is a disaster mixture. It's just a disaster waiting to happen.”
Gracie Martinez is a 52-year-old Hispanic small business owner from Eagle Pass, Texas. The state is a border town that President Trump visited in February when he and Biden visited the state on the same day. Martinez said she once voted for former President Barack Obama and remains a Democrat, but now supports Trump, primarily because of the border.
“It's terrible,” she said. “A huge number of people are giving them medical care, money, and phones,” she said, complaining that people who go through the legal immigration system are treated badly.
Priscilla Hessles, 55, a teacher who lives in Eagle Pass, Texas, described the current situation as “almost overtaking” her town.
“We don't know where they are hiding. We don't know where they come in and where they come out,” Jerez said. She said she was taking an evening walk to a local church, but she encountered a thug who upset her and she stopped. The group of men she claimed were immigrants.
Immigration is almost certain to be one of the central issues in the November election, as both sides spend the next six months trying to make the case that the other is wrong on border security.
The president's reelection campaign recently launched a $30 million advertising campaign targeting Latino viewers in key battleground states. It includes digital ads in English and Spanish that highlight President Trump's past descriptions of Mexican immigrants as “criminals” and “rapists.”
The White House is also considering a series of executive actions that could significantly tighten immigration restrictions, effectively moving through Congress after failing to pass a bipartisan deal backed by Biden.
“Trump is a con man who only cares about himself,” said Kevin Muñoz, a spokesman for the Biden campaign. “We're going to let voters know that this November.”
Mr. Trump is scheduled to campaign in Wisconsin on Tuesday and Michigan this week, where he is expected to once again confront Mr. Biden on immigration. His campaign said his event in the western Michigan city of Grand Rapids would focus on what it described as “Biden's border bloodshed.”
The former president has called the recent record number of arrests at the Southwest border crossing an “invasion” orchestrated by Democrats to change the very nature of America. President Trump has accused Biden of intentionally allowing unrestricted entry of would-be criminals and terrorists, going so far as to claim that the president is involved in a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States.”
He also accused immigrants, many of them women and children fleeing poverty and violence, of “contaminating the blood” of America with drugs and disease, and claimed that some are “not human beings.” . Experts who study extremism have warned against using dehumanizing language to describe migrants.
There is no evidence that foreign governments are emptying prisons or psychiatric hospitals, as Trump claims. And while conservative news coverage has been dominated by a few high-profile violent crimes allegedly committed illegally by people in the country, the latest FBI statistics show that overall violent crime in the United States fell again last year, showing that the downward trend has continued since the pandemic era. spike.
The study also found that people in this country illegally are much less likely to be arrested for violence, drug and property crimes than native-born Americans.
“Certainly in recent months there has been a clear shift in political support,” said Krish Omara Vignaraja, president and CEO of the immigrant resettlement organization Global Refuge and a former Obama administration and State Department official. It was shown,” he said.
“I think it has to do with the rhetoric of the past few years,” she said, “and just succumbing to loud and extreme xenophobic rhetoric that doesn’t counter the reality and the facts on the ground.” It’s this power relationship.”
One reason why borders have become such a salient issue is that their effects are felt far from them.
Trump's allies, particularly Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, are using state-funded buses to bring 100,000 people to Democratic-led cities such as New York, Denver and Chicago, where Democrats will hold their conventions this summer. sending more immigrants. The program was initially dismissed as a publicity stunt, but the influx has strained city budgets and left local leaders scrambling to provide emergency housing and medical care to a new group of immigrants.
On the other hand, local news reports were mostly negative. Viewers have seen immigrants as the culprit in everything from a series of gang-related robberies in New Jersey to robberies targeting retail stores in suburban Philadelphia to measles outbreaks in parts of Arizona and Illinois. I have seen it being criticized.
Mr. Abbott ignored a U.S. Supreme Court order by sending the Texas National Guard to the border and installing concertina wire along parts of the Rio Grande, arguing that states should be able to enforce their own immigration laws. .
Some far-right internet sites have begun to point to Mr. Abbott's actions as the first salvo in a coming civil war. And Russia has also helped spread and amplify misleading and inflammatory content about U.S. immigration and border security as part of a broader effort to polarize the American public. A recent analysis by Logical, a company that tracks Russian disinformation, shows that Kremlin-linked online influencers and social media accounts are piggybacking on the idea of a new civil war or efforts by states like Texas to secede from the Union. It turned out that it was.
Amy Cooter, director of research at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, worries that the current wave of civil war talk will only intensify as the election approaches. So far, it has generally been confined to far-right message boards. But immigration in general is a sufficient concern that its political influence increases, Cooter said.
“Even Americans who are not extremists are concerned about this,” she says. “It's about culture and the perception of who is American.”
Others, like Eagle Pass Bar owner Rudy Menchaca, who works for a company that imports Corona beer from Mexico, blame problems at the border for hurting business.
Mr. Menchaca is the type of Hispanic voter Mr. Biden is counting on to support his re-election bid. The 27-year-old said he was not a fan of President Trump's rhetoric or his portrayal of Hispanic and Mexican-Americans. “Not all of us are like that,” he said.
However, he said he was open to supporting the former president, taking into account the reality on the ground.
Menchaca said of the Texas troops sent to the border, “If you have something to do, you want the soldiers to be there.” “Bad things can get in.”
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Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers David Klepper in Washington and Matt Brown in Chicago contributed to this report.
