Read Zachary Mueller’s op-ed in KC Star & Wichita Eagle: “Roger Marshall’s migrant ‘invasion’ rhetoric: straight out of domestic terrorist mouths” and other key voices pushing back below
Washington, DC — Key observers are highlighting and pushing back against the dangerous rhetoric, policy record and vision of Donald Trump and Republican allies on immigration – from the six-year anniversary of Trump’s family separation horrors to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and other Trump second term immigration policies that threaten immigrants and all Americans. Key voices include:
- America’s Voice Senior Research Director Zachary Mueller op-ed, jointly running in Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle: “Roger Marshall’s migrant ‘invasion’ rhetoric: straight out of domestic terrorist mouths:” Senator Marshall was a featured speaker at a Heritage Foundation immigration event yesterday that complemented their Project 2025 agenda. Today, Mueller’s new op-ed notes in part: “May 14 marks two years to the day when a white nationalist drove to a Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York, where he murdered 10 Black people. The shooter left behind a racist screed that repeatedly cited the alleged ‘invasion’ by immigrants and the larger ‘great replacement theory’ as his motivation. This bigoted and antisemitic replacement conspiracy theory, originally popular among the white nationalist movement, claims there is an intentional plot by liberal elites to facilitate an invasion of nonwhite people to replace the white population in Western countries. …Unfortunately, while these conspiracies used to be limited to the white nationalist fringes of the internet, they have spread and been mainstreamed in recent years by numerous elected officials, including Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall. Marshall has repeatedly and falsely asserted that migrants seeking safety in the United States constitute an armed military-style invasion — echoing the racist screeds of multiple domestic terrorists … His language is not ‘tough talk.’ Marshall’s repeated references to an ‘invasion’ are already associated with a significant body count. Promoting this language and codifying it in official congressional action normalizes the white nationalist conspiracy. The more this rhetoric is normalized, the more the threats to public safety increase.” Read Mueller’s full op-ed HERE.
- Biden-Harris campaign and America’s Voice highlight Trump’s family separation and second term plans: Yesterday, on the six-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s family separation policy – one of the darkest chapters of Trump’s or any other modern presidency – the Biden-Harris campaign released a new ad reminding viewers of those horrors and highlighting Trump’s plans to go even further if he’s reelected (see the America’s Voice statement in reaction yesterday).
- Philip Bump in the Washington Post, “Six years later, 1,400 children remain separated from their families:” Bump notes in part, “As he seeks reelection to the presidency, Donald Trump has again focused on immigration as an issue and pledged a hard-line approach. Speaking on CNN last year, he celebrated the effects of the policy … According to the most recent task force data, the families of more than 1,000 kids taken away at the border have not had the opportunity to see who those children have become.”
- Isabela Dias in Mother Jones, “On the Anniversary of Family Separation, the Heritage Foundation Hosted the Policy’s Intellectual ‘Father’:” Dias notes in part, “On May 7, 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions officially announced the Trump administration’s infamous ‘zero tolerance’ policy … Standing next to Sessions that day was Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The intellectual ‘father’ of the idea of separating families to deter migration, Homan was among the Homeland Security officials who first floated the extreme measure … on the anniversary of the ‘zero tolerance’ policy, Homan was again on public display—a speaker at a Heritage Foundation event called ‘Securing the Border and Keeping Americans Safe: How Illegal Immigration Leads to Preventable Crime.’ It was meant to draw on a false trope linking immigrants to criminal activity and violence … Homan is also helping lay the groundwork for a potential second Trump presidency’s mass deportation plans. ‘We’re going to do it the way we’ve always done it—professionally and well-planned—and we take the worst first,’ he said on The Joe Piscopo Show earlier this week. Homan then added a caveat: ‘No one is off the table.'”
- Watch recording of virtual briefing on Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and potential damage of Trump second term on immigration: The damage of a Trump second term on immigration – from re-upping family separation to mass deportation to the allied Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda – also was the topic of a virtual briefing event held on Monday of this week, featuring immigration experts and analysts from America’s Voice, Cato Institute, Niskanen Center, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association – watch a recorded version of the briefing HERE.
