“Violent criminals.” “Terrorists.” “Rapists, murderers, and thugs.” “Depraved savages.”
Those are the words of Republican Senators and representatives, directly quoted on the official White House website. They’re words that frequently appear throughout the Trump administration’s executive orders and political agenda.
But the vast majority of people to whom these terms refer don’t actually fit their vicious definitions. Most of the 11 million illegal immigrants in America came here not with malicious intentions, but to build better lives for themselves and their families. Many immigrants leave their countries in the first place because their governments don’t provide them with the resources they need to survive.
Once they reach the American border, however, they are met with hostility and alienation.
President Donald Trump built his campaign on promises to close the border to these “illegal monsters,” popularizing broad generalizations of the immigrant population. While gang members and drug dealers exist within that population, his weaponization of that small statistic has been a tool for his administration to justify their executive actions and mask their racist motivations.
The Trump administration’s rhetoric and the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) target almost exclusively Mexican, Central American, and South American immigrants, despite the fact that 25% of undocumented immigrants came from other countries, according to a 2021 study by the Migration Policy Institute.
Those in the highest positions of power are leading the American people by shameful example as they spread harmful and racist stereotypes, misinformation, and xenophobia. And since they’re doing it, this openly hateful behavior is becoming almost normalized.
President Donald Trump’s deliberate discrimination of minority groups continues to be highlighted through the actions he takes towards immigrants and the dehumanizing manner in which he describes them to the media.
“We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in, we’re stopping a lot of them. And we’re taking people out of the country, you wouldn’t believe how bad these people are.” Trump said. “These aren’t people, these are animals.”
His justification for calling immigrants “animals” is that immigrants cause a rise in crime rates—but statistics disprove this claim. In fact, according to the American Immigration Council, as immigration in America has risen, the crime rate has fallen.
“By 2022 the share of immigrants had more than doubled to 13.9%, while the total crime rate had dropped by 60.4%,” as stated in their article debunking the false correlation between America’s crime rates and immigration.
Yet President Trump has continued to place mass deportation at the top of his list of priorities in his second presidential term, and unfortunately, he has brought with him other Republican representatives who share his racial bias.
We need to recognize Trump’s real motives as he pushes mass deportations, instead of simply hiding behind the inaccurate argument that they are all dangerous criminals. It is time for America to acknowledge the blatant racism and xenophobia masquerading as concern for economic welfare and crime rates.