Immigration Policy And Political Violence

The Trump presidency put a lot of energy into securing the border with Mexico. From the first day of his candidacy, Mr. Trump demonized immigrants from Latin America. He pledged to build a wall and vowed to have México pay for it. He declared a state of emergency at the border, cancelled visas used by farm workers, launched ICE raids around the country, enacted punitive policies toward sanctuary cities, refused entry to asylum seekers, and punished families entering illegally by separating parents from their children with no records indicating how to reunite them.

All of the above was designed to “protect us” from vague threats posed by Latin American immigrants, even though studies show that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born American citizens do.

Admittedly, Latin America has serious problems with crime and corruption. Mexico’s homicide rate per capita is five times that of the US, and some other countries are worse. It can be argued that these high crime rates are caused by the illegal drug trade, of which the US is one of the largest customers, but it cannot be denied that violent crime is a serious issue south of the border.

Political violence is common in Latin America. We don’t hear about this much in the US, but attacks on politicians and officials happen frequently, often with deadly consequences.

Political violence in the US was rare before the Trump era. Representatives Gabby Giffords and Steve Scalise were shot in recent years, but those incidents were outliers.

Ironically, political violence has become one of the legacies of the Trump administration. Politicians, even those who have supported the president, are routinely harassed and receive death threats. The storming of the Capitol by a large pro-Trump mob determined to overturn the election was unlike any other event in US history.

Hence, the irony: A president who was determined to push back against the worst elements of Latin America, ended up fomenting the kind of deadly anti-government violence that causes problems in the very countries from which he claimed to be protecting us.

It’s worth noting that the US Capitol was not attacked by immigrants, but rather by Trump’s most ardent supporters, American citizens who felt that his anti-immigration policies were necessary to “keep us safe.”

By the way, México never paid for the wall. American taxpayers did when Trump illegally misappropriated funds from the military budget. Congress passed a bill asserting that only they were allowed to direct the use of federal funds, but they were too spineless to override the president’s veto. And so we paid for the wall but ended up with the crime anyway.