Watch New “Ripped Apart” Ad and Access Recorded Version of Yesterday’s Briefing with America’s Voice, Cato Institute, AILA, and Niskanen Center on Trump 2nd Term: HERE
Washington, DC — The Biden-Harris campaign today released a new ad targeting voters in key 2024 states tied to today’s six-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s family separation policy, which separated children from their parents and remains one of the darkest chapters of Trump’s or any other modern presidency.
The ad, “Ripped Apart,” not only offers a powerful indictment and reminder of the horrors of Trump’s family separation policy, but connects to the extremism and dangers of a second Trump term on immigration, including Trump’s pledges to go further if he’s reelected. As Biden-Harris 2024 Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez stated in a campaign press release, “If Trump is reelected, the chaos and cruelty we saw in his first term is the floor: he’ll go even further to attack and demonize immigrants, while doing nothing to address the real issues plaguing our broken immigration system. He’s betting that his cruelty and divisiveness is a winning tactic at the ballot box, but like they’ve done in election after election, the American people will prove Donald Trump wrong…”
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“Donald Trump’s family separation policy generated national and international outrage, including bipartisan condemnation and a collective pledge that our nation was better than this. Unfortunately, instead of leaving that dark chapter of our recent history in the past, Trump is now promising to go further in a potential second term – including relying on the National Guard and military to do mass roundups of long-settled immigrants who are our neighbors, co-workers, family members, classmates, and friends.
Donald Trump is proudly proclaiming a dark, dystopian future for America, and it starts with mass detention camps, forced deportation, armed soldiers, and police rounding up and deporting immigrants and chaos across state lines and across the country. Only the American people can put a stop to this madness. The Biden campaign is right to sound the alarm and remind observers that the real Trump legacy on immigration shouldn’t be whitewashed or defended.”
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 yesterday, featuring immigration experts and analysts from America’s Voice, Cato Institute, Niskanen Center, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association (see quotes below):
Kristie De Peña, Senior VP for Policy and Director of Immigration at the Niskanen Center, said: “The changes proposed in Project 2025 do not reflect what Americans want to see in a secure, controlled, and effective immigration system. The Project 2025 proposals only further the political goals of a small cohort of people unconcerned with the struggles of our small businesses, growing prices for Americans, the balance of power between the states and the federal government, and the security of our nation.”
David J. Bier, Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, said: “Another term for a nativist president would obliterate America’s legal immigration system, undermine the rule of law, and sow chaos at the border and in the interior. A nativist agenda for the country would harm the U.S. economy, damage its security, and threaten Americans’ civil liberties. America needs real immigration reform, not mass deportation fantasies.”
Zachary Mueller, Senior Director of Research for America’s Voice, highlighted how Trump and allies are weaponizing immigration lies and conspiracies on the campaign trail and its relationship to political violence and democratic legitimacy, noting: “Ken Cuccinelli, the author of the DHS section of the Project 2025 report and short-tenured acting DHS Secretary under the Trump administration, has been a key figure pushing the adoption of the invasion conspiracy, which is inexorably tied to the white nationalist and antisemitic replacement theory and the pattern of domestic terrorism racking the nation. We have tracked the increasingly widespread adoption of this rhetoric closely, seeing over 200 Facebook and 44 TV ads backed by an estimated $10 million in just these first four months of 2024 promoting the white nationalist invasion conspiracy.”
Angela Kelley, Senior Advisor, American Immigration Lawyers Association moderated the discussion and noted, “The roadmap for a second Trump term isn’t hard to follow nor is it in pencil. It’s in Sharpie and its consequences will cause indelible damage. Damage to the millions of American families that will be destroyed by deportation, to those fleeing violence who will face a sealed border, and to all citizens who’ll have to show papers or risk arrest. The Trump plan in action will throw sand into America’s economic engine and a dagger in the heart of America’s character.
- Read the Niskanen Center analysis on Project 2025 here and an America’s Voice report on the subject here.
- Watch Cato Institute, David J. Bier testifies at the hearing, “How the Border Crisis Impacts Public Safety,” before the Committee on Oversight and Accountability (Testimony + Q&A)
- Read a Univision op-ed from America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas, “How Trump’s relentless anti-immigrant focus is tied to his threats to democracy”
- Read America’s Voice statement: Trump’s Defining Vision for Second Term: “Deploying American Troops in American Communities” to Round Up and Purge Immigrants
