Incendiary Rhetoric And Misinformation Over Immigration

On the second day of the GOP Convention in Milwaukee, the Republican Party hammered a message centered on immigration. The day of programming, known as “Make America Safe Once Again,” featured a series of speeches promoting anti-immigrant talking points, many of which are factually untrue.

Ahead of the day’s events, America’s Voice, an organization that promotes immigration reform, convened a press call to counter the extreme rhetoric. Texas Congresswoman Veronica Escobar stated that a lot of the language used to describe immigrants or migrants, such as “invasion,” directly mirrors the screed published by the El Paso shooter in 2019. He drove nine hours through Texas specifically to target a Latino community.

During the press conference, Escobar also spoke about Project 2025 and how it calls for mass deportations as well as the elimination of many legal pathways to citizenship. “It is very important that the American public [understand] the danger in this moment,” she warned. 

No speech from the GOP Convention highlighted the incendiary rhetoric Escobar was warning about more than Ted Cruz. On Tuesday night, the Senator from Texas claimed that Democrats want votes from [undocumented immigrants] more than they want to protect our children. He also spoke in graphic detail about a recent murder in Texas committed by two undocumented individuals.

Cruz claimed that every day, Americans are being “murdered, assaulted, or raped,” by undocumented immigrants or migrants. The Associated Press fact-checked this claim and noted that while there have been high-profile crimes involving immigrants, there is no evidence there has been a surge in crime as a result of migrants. Recent studies have also shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born counterparts.

Escobar concedes that the facts about the net positives from immigration are not breaking through in the same way as the misinformation Republicans are using. She also pointed out that Republicans walked away from a bipartisan border security bill, which restricted the right of asylum, because Trump told them to do so. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blasted that move from Republicans. “Extreme MAGA Republicans are not serious about addressing the challenges that clearly exist at the border, which is why they detonated their own legislation,” he said at the time.

If the GOP Convention is any indication, the final weeks of the presidential campaign will continue to feature immigration as a central theme for the Republican Party. Naureen Shah, the Deputy Director of Government Affairs, the Equality Division of the ACLU, sounded the alarm of the major consequences that could arise if Trump re-enters the White House. “A second Trump administration would enact immigration policies that are by far crueler, more extreme, and more fundamentally damaging to core rights and freedoms than any in living memory,” she said.