Donald Trump lies about virtually everything, but he saves his most outrageous falsehoods for the immigrants who are “poisoning the blood of our country.” He calls them “vermin,” an epithet that matches his recent declaration that “they’re not people, in my opinion.”
It started back in 2015 when he claimed that Mexico is sending drug smugglers, criminals and rapists. The facts, however, are very different. Among the people convicted of trafficking fentanyl in 2021, 86% were American citizens.
In their book, “Immigration and Crime,” Graham Ousey and Charis Kubrin analyzed 20 years of data and they concluded that “long-standing concerns about immigration as a major source of crime are unfounded. In fact, communities with more immigration tend to have less crime, especially violent crimes like homicide.”
At a Richmond, Va., rally, Trump falsely claimed that “prison populations all over the world are at the lowest point they’d been in many decades because they’re dumping their prisoners into our country.” In Rome, Ga., he increased the fear factor by adding “they’re emptying their mental institutions into the U.S.”
In his 2016 campaign Trump declared that there were 34 million undocumented people in the country. (The actual number is 11.4 million.) In recent speeches Trump asserts that the number of current border crossings is 20 million. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has counted 7.3 million “border encounters” from January 2021 to December 2023.
Trump pulls yet another figure out of the air: he asserts that only 3% of those who claim asylum show up for their court hearings. I’ve looked at several studies and the number of asylum seekers who do report ranges from 83% to 92%. It is essential to note that migrants who report to authorities are not, under the 1980 Refugee Act, illegal aliens.
Only 32% of those who complete their asylum hearings are allowed to stay in the country. Most of those denied asylum are those fleeing economic difficulties (not political oppression) in their home countries. Those not meeting asylum criteria are deported, and in fiscal 2023 there were a record number of deportations — 10 times the number of those under Trump in fiscal 2020.
Trump also lies when he contends that a record number of terrorists have crossed the southern border, and he also fibs when he says that none crossed during his presidency. In fiscal year 2019, 280 terror watchlist migrants were arrested as opposed to 380 during Biden’s last two years.
This is hardly a “terrorist rush” at the border as former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has claimed. A CBP spokesman reported that “encounters of known and suspected terrorists at our borders are very uncommon.”
One focus of fear mongering is Asians coming across the border. In a column for the Lewiston Tribune (March 24), Marvin Dugger suggests, without evidence, that 28,000 Chinese of military age are “setting up sleeper cells like the terrorists did before 9/11.”
For 60 years Asian gangs have been involved in racketeering, gambling and running drugs. Chinese mob bosses are interested in making money, not overthrowing the American government. Some of the gangs have distant origins in pre-Communist China, but, in some cases, they perform surveillance services on suspected Chinese dissidents in the U.S.
ProPublica has uncovered hundreds of illegal marijuana farms from California to Maine that are run by Chinese gangs. After responding to ads and then having their passports and phones confiscated, Chinese migrants work in squalor and terror on these farms.
Of more serious concern are the 40,000 Central Asians who are now awaiting asylum hearings. Since October 2023, 50 of those migrants have been found on the terrorist watchlist and they have been arrested. One from Uzbekistan did in fact have ties to ISIS, and increased surveillance of potential terrorists is of course required.
For some time now studies have shown that domestic terrorism is a far greater threat to national security. A survey published in PubMed Central (January 2024) revealed that 41% of MAGA Republicans strongly agreed that violent measures were necessary to protect the country.
President Biden has requested funding for 1,300 more border agents, 1,000 more officers to counter drug smuggling, and 1,600 more asylum officers. Major bipartisan legislation that contained most of what Republicans have requested for years was blocked by Trump, who would rather weaponize the issue against Biden and the Democrats.
Gier is professor emeritus at the University of Idaho. Email him at ngier006@gmail.com.
