Washington, DC — One of the sharpest and most consequential contrasts between VP Kamala Harris and Donald Trump remains over the issue of immigration, both on the campaign trail and how they would address the issue while in office. Notably, as Trump and allies continue their relentless and lurid anti-immigrant lies, they are stoking a climate of potential violence and intimidation that threatens both immigrants and native-born alike. Meanwhile, VP Harris is laying out a clear and balanced agenda.
- VP Harris continues to lean into immigration and lay out a vision that includes the border, but goes beyond the border: In addition to her heavily covered Arizona immigration and border speech Friday evening (see here for the reaction of Vanessa Cárdenas), VP Harris also leaned into immigration during a Las Vegas speech this weekend, saying of Trump on the issue, “he’d prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem,” while also highlighting that “he cruelly separated families and plans to do it again.” VP Harris also continued to highlight that an immigration solution cannot be limited to the border, noting that her vision for immigration reform includes both “strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship — including for hard working immigrants who have been here for years, including our Dreamers.”
- Donald Trump continues lurid anti-immigrant lies and stokes more potential violence: As the Washington Post noted of Trump’s Pennsylvania speech this weekend, he “spent much of his two-hour speech on elaborate descriptions of the individuals purportedly roaming the nation, calling them “stone-cold killers,” “worse than any of our criminals,” “monsters,” and people who “have no heart” and “don’t care who they kill.”
At his Pennsylvania rally, he also openly continued his pattern of endorsing violence, calling for “one real rough, nasty” and “violent day” of police retaliation against criminals, saying, “One rough hour — and I mean real rough — the word will get out and it will end immediately, you know? It will end immediately.” The comments echo his recent pledges that his unsparing mass deportations would be “bloody” and that he would pursue retribution against his political enemies (read more in this Talking Points Memo analysis, “Trump’s Obsession with Violence Becomes More Explicit.”)
It’s not just immigrants who are being targeted by this potential violence. For example, as Miriam Jordan writes in The New York Times, “An Ohio Businessman Faces Death Threats for Praising His Haitian Workers,” the “lifelong Republican” Jamie McGregor is now facing “death threats, a lockdown at his company and posters around town branding him a traitor” after publicly “speaking favorably” about the Haitian immigrants he employs.
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“To paraphrase a popular saying, for Donald Trump, ‘It’s the violence, stupid.’ That’s all he has. Violence. Donald Trump’s campaign seems little more than a lurid anti-immigrant fantasy show. He is calling for a day or even an hour of violence by police unfettered by criminal and civil rights law which seems to be something between ‘The Purge’ and Kristallnacht. He sees immigrants as a tool to stoke fear and divide Americans and distract us on issues of race and immigration. In contrast, VP Kamala Harris is laying out a vision on immigration that connects with the majority of Americans who want both an orderly border and legal immigration avenues and citizenship for long-settled immigrants.
Harris’s approach is rooted in a fundamentally different worldview and vision of America. The Harris/Walz vision recognizes that legal and orderly immigration and the stories, dreams, and sacrifices of generations of immigrants are among America’s greatest strengths and enduring advantages. Meanwhile, the Trump/Vance vision is filled with darkness and disinformation, demagoguing immigrants in a way that courts political violence and elevates white nationalist conspiracies. The potential violence embedded in the latter vision is a feature, not a bug, for its proponents. The stakes and implications for all Americans are real and consequential.”
