MILWAUKEE — Former President Donald Trump and Republicans are in lock step on the issue of immigration, further evidence that he has cemented his grip on the party during his third run for the White House.
At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week, the rhetoric and the party platform match his vision of isolationism and border security, and his suspicion of the people crossing the 2,000-mile line dividing Mexico and the United States, as they have since his first run for president in 2016. But the broadsides have become darker and the language more conspiratorial.
Here are four immigration takeaways from the convention.
Trump’s conspiracies about immigrants and illegal voting have become widespread among Republicans.
In panels and speeches at the convention, falsehoods about noncitizens’ voting have become more pervasive and central to Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
Mark Morgan, a former top Trump immigration official, claimed without evidence that Democrats were encouraging illegal immigration for political reasons, in order to bring more people into their party. Kari Lake, a Trump acolyte and Republican nominee for Senate in Arizona, falsely accused her Democratic opponent of voting “to let the millions of people who poured into our country illegally cast a ballot in this upcoming election.”
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said Democrats “wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children.” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida recalled a nightmare, he said, in which “Biden and the Democrats flew so many illegals” into the United States that it “was easy for Democrats to rig the elections.”
Voter fraud is extraordinarily rare, and allegations that widespread numbers of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally are unlawfully voting have been consistently discredited. But Trump’s false claim, which is being used to disenfranchise Americans, has almost universally been adopted by his party.
Deaths of young women are being used in emotional appeals that tie crime to immigration.
Kate Steinle. Laken Riley. Rachel Morin. Republican political candidates and leaders are invoking the names of women, many of them young and white, who authorities have said were killed by immigrants without permanent legal status. Their deaths have been used to amplify calls for mass deportations and other hard-line immigration restrictions.
On Tuesday, Cruz drew shudders from some audience members as he described sitting in homes with the grieving families of some the women. “Tonight, I speak for Kate and Laken and Rachel,” he said.
A day later, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas named 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was killed in Houston. Two Venezuelan men who entered the U.S. illegally have been charged in her strangling. “She’s one of thousands whose lives have been destroyed by Joe Biden’s open border policies,” he said.
There is little comprehensive data on the crimes committed by immigrants in the U.S. illegally. But many studies show that crime has gone down while illegal immigration has increased, and that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than are people born in the United States. Republicans say that any crime committed by a person not lawfully in the country is one too many.
“Mass deportation now!” is the new “Build the wall.”
Familiar “Build the wall” chants were still heard occasionally at the convention, but a new slogan is gaining prominence, spotted on white, red and blue signs throughout the hall: “Mass deportation now!”
Trump’s mass deportation proposal would be the largest in the nation’s history, and Trump surrogates and convention speakers are forging support for it. But they have offered few details about how much it would cost, how it would work and exactly whom it would target.
On Monday, Thomas D. Homan, who served as Trump’s acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, dismissed concerns that the program would be inhumane and that its holding centers would resemble “concentration camps.” Other speakers framed the effort as necessary, saying migrants were taking housing, jobs and services from other marginalized Americans, such as veterans and Black and Latino workers.
Some surveys show that more Americans would now be in favor of such a plan but that support drops, particularly among Latino voters, when the dragnet is said to include immigrants who have been in the country for decades or hold jobs and pay taxes.
Speaking at an event hosted by the America First Policy Institute on Tuesday, Chad Wolfe, who served as director of homeland security under Trump, suggested officials were working out specifics this week.
“We’re planning, and doing a lot of that planning today, both from a high-level policy perspective, but also very much in the weeds and an operational perspective,” he said. “How do you effectuate a large deportation order?”
Republicans focus on stories about the American dream but ignore legal pathways for immigrants.
Rep. Monica de La Cruz, who is in a closely watched reelection race in Texas, described herself on Wednesday as a “proud granddaughter of Mexican farmworkers who came here with little more than faith in God.”
Her presence on the stage was part of an increase in candidates and elected officials of color, some with immigrant backgrounds, who cite the promise of the United States and the American dream to underscore support for legal immigration. Their stories are also used to bolster Republicans’ case against Democrats who accuse them of being racist and hating immigrants.
“Our message to every legal immigrant in this country is this: You’re like my parents. You deserve the opportunity to secure a better life for your children in America,” said Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and onetime presidential rival to Trump. “But our message to illegal immigrants is also this: We will return you to your country of origin. Not because you’re all bad people, but because you broke the law.”
But for many immigrants seeking visas or coming into the country as asylum-seekers, the system is gummed up, overtaxed and underfunded, leaving people sometimes waiting years for court hearings. There has been little to no discussion of how the party plans to improve those legal pathways, which members of both parties agree are broken.