Vanessa Cárdenas: “Trump’s first descent on the Trump Tower escalator in 2015 accelerated the Republican Party’s descent on immigration, including their ongoing refusal to work on real solutions to modernize our broken immigration system..”
Washington, DC – Donald Trump, who kicked off his first presidential campaign by slandering Mexican immigrants, has long made vile anti-immigrant rhetoric and cruel and dysfunctional immigration policy a cornerstone of his brand. Given that context and reality, it’s hard to fathom that Trump is managing to take his nativism and fearmongering in even more dangerous and incendiary directions in recent weeks. But he has done just that.
The New York Times recently characterized Trump’s rhetoric as adopting “language with echoes of white supremacy and Hitler” (and see other recent reports from NBC News and Axios documenting the former President’s increasingly violent rhetoric). And today, Marianne LeVine and Meryl Kornfield examine Trump’s escalating anti-immigrant focus in an important new story in the Washington Post, “Trump’s anti-immigrant onslaught sparks fresh alarm heading into 2024” (excerpted below).
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and out of control on immigrants and the border, and we cannot afford to become desensitized to his incendiary and vile rhetoric. They have real world consequences and the potential to spark more violence, in addition to spreading extremism like a virus throughout the Republican Party.
Witness how Trump allies like Jim Jordan are looking to make extreme and unworkable demands that we incarcerate every single migrant and asylum seeker encountered at the border as a precondition for keeping our government open. Trump’s first descent on the Trump Tower escalator in 2015 accelerated the Republican Party’s descent on immigration, including their ongoing refusal to work on real solutions to modernize our broken immigration system.
As the rhetoric steadily becomes more extreme, the threat to public safety grows, and the chaos and dysfunction in government will continue to spiral. All of which comes at an immediate and direct expense of entire communities and continues to pose an ever-looming threat to our democracy.”
Read key excerpts from Marianne LeVine and Meryl Kornfield in the Washington Post, “Trump’s anti-immigrant onslaught sparks fresh alarm heading into 2024”:
“Donald Trump has denigrated undocumented immigrants in recent weeks by accusing them of ‘poisoning the blood of our country,’ associating them with drug and alcohol use and portraying them as dangerous threats to Americans, prompting widespread criticism and denunciations of racism and xenophobia from immigrant and civil rights groups.
During a recent rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the former president said: ‘These people are very aggressive: They drink, they have drugs, a lot of things happening.’ In Dubuque, Iowa, last month, he told his audience: ‘It’s the blood of our country; what they’re doing is destroying our country.’ And in New Hampshire on Monday, Trump baselessly accused immigrants crossing the Mexican border of being involved in the recent attacks on Israel. ‘People (are) pouring into our country, and we have no idea from where they come,’ he said.
…Domingo Garcia, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, the oldest Hispanic civil rights group in the country, said that Trump’s comments about blood indicate his language is ‘getting more extreme,’ comparing it to Nazi propaganda about Jewish people, and that more people should be paying attention ahead of the 2024 election.
…Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, said that ‘poisoning’ language has directly appealed to people in the past who have gone on to commit violence against minorities, citing the El Paso and Tree of Life synagogue mass shooters.
‘These were both events that were driven by a deeply white supremacist, deeply anti-immigrant set of conspiracies and a coherent anti-immigrant worldview that was centered on dehumanizing the other’ he said. ‘And in this context, I think it’s always going to be deeply concerning when we see the continued proliferation of what are openly white supremacist dog whistles that will likely inspire more individuals to engage in offline conduct targeting these communities.’”
Additional Background
- Read a new analysis from America’s Voice Political Director Zachary Mueller, “Republicans Peddle Bigoted Conspiracies About the Border in the Wake of the Attacks in Israel”
- Read the recent release from AV, “GOP and Right-Wing Escalate Violent Immigration Rhetoric Following Attacks in Israel”
