Trump Has Whipped Up an Anti-Immigrant Frenzy. Will Anyone Counter It in 2024?

As expected, Republicans put immigration center stage during the Republican National Convention this month, using migrants as scapegoats for all manner of problems that plague U.S. society.

Their extremist scaremongering reached a fever pitch on July 18 when Donald Trump — in formally accepting the Republican presidential nomination — deployed fascist and false rhetoric about an immigrant “invasion.”

“The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country,” Trump said. “They’re coming from everywhere. They’re coming at levels that we’ve never seen before. … They’re coming from prisons. They’re coming from jails. They’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums.”

He went on to promise “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.”

The Republicans’ frenzied rhetoric on immigration is a clearly calculated effort to stoke fear about immigration to secure more votes.

Throughout the week, speakers doubled down on calls for mass deportations, completion of the border wall and increased border security, and told straight-up lies about immigrants, perpetuating false narratives that immigration is a public safety issue. The party platform approved at the convention centered and laid the groundwork for unprecedented anti-immigrant policies, as leadership openly touted plans to expand immigration detention and deportation, promising to bring in the National Guard and deploy local police to round up and deport millions of people. This level of militarism opens the door to frightening levels of surveillance across the country, and in particular an unparalleled level of targeting and racially profiling of Black and Brown communities. These types of policies are the real public safety threats that will ultimately hurt all our communities.

As speaker after speaker focused on immigration, the audience chanted, “Send them back,” while waving signs calling for mass deportations now. The racist rhetoric and the immigration policies that were proposed will never make our communities safer. They are grounded in lies designed to create and embolden hate and racism as a divide-and-conquer strategy to evade responsibility for refusing to enact policies that address the challenges of working people in this country. They also portend a much deeper threat of fascism that undermines our humanity and, if not addressed, will upend any semblance of democracy and put all Americans at risk.

Donald Trump and his supporters call for the deportation of millions of people, expansion of open-air detention camps, ideological screenings for visa applicants and revocation of status for millions of documented immigrants, for example by ending Temporary Protected Status and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Meanwhile, the Biden administration has taken some small steps to protect some groups of immigrants. For example, the administration recently announced protections for spouses of U.S. citizens, and last year the administration implemented protections for undocumented workplace whistleblowers. But by and large, Joe Biden’s rhetoric and policies have mirrored the right’s on border security. Biden has enacted policies that shut down the border, severely restricted people’s access to asylum protections, and increased border prosecutions. At the same time, the administration is taking steps to expand the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention system, paving the way for a potential Trump administration to more easily carry out its mass deportation plans.

We already know what havoc Trump can wreak on immigrant communities. As president, he enacted many of the same or similar policies that he is espousing now. Family separation was a flashpoint in his first term, driven by the Trump administration’s policy of criminally prosecuting parents migrating with their children. But in reality, all of the policies implemented by his administration separated families and communities, including large-scale immigration raids, the Muslim and African bans, the Remain in Mexico policy, the Title 42 shutdown of the southern border, and more. Each of these policies had a devastating impact on families and communities in the U.S. and led to a ballooning immigration detention system that detained 50,000 people at its peak.

Trump is now threatening to take a second swing at imparting this terror on immigrant and mixed-status families. He and his advisers have outlined clearly the ways that Trump will recycle some of these same policies and layer on new, more aggressive ones. If he becomes president again, this time, he will have the backing of a corrupt court system that has been stacked by conservatives, and a narrative and legislative path that has been reinforced by President Biden, who has repeatedly invited Trump to join him in lobbying Congress for what he called the “strongest border deal the country has ever seen.”

The fearmongering anti-immigrant agenda carried out by both parties is not new. It’s a replication of clear-cut tactics that have given rise to fascism throughout history. Attacking and scapegoating immigrants pits communities against each other and establishes broad acceptance of increased state power, control and suppression. Normalizing the deployment of law enforcement against immigrant communities and treating them as expendable will in time make it easier for people to accept the erosion of rights on a broader scale. There is no separating attacks on immigrants from attacks on all of us.

We are in a moment that requires bold leadership and a firm commitment to the humanity and dignity of all people, not only to protect immigrant communities who are again the political target in another toxic election cycle, but also to protect us all from the rising tide of fascism and to respond to the real crises that face our country and the world — from climate change and the cost of health care, to the rising cost of housing and ever-widening income inequality. Instead, the Democrats have thus far largely capitulated to the Republicans’ dangerous, racist narrative on immigration, normalizing and legitimizing their crime panic and calls for harsher immigration policies.

Now with Biden stepping aside and new leadership coming to the party, Democrats have an opportunity to change course. To effectively take the wind out of the sails of the right’s hate-filled agenda, we need our leaders to directly address people’s daily struggles and treat all people, no matter where they were born, with dignity and respect. Nobody wins when fear and hate drive policy.

We should follow the lead of communities across the country who are rejecting policies that pit communities against each other and tear families apart and instead are creating a politics of compassion and mutual support. They are fighting to shut down detention centers, creating mutual aid networks to support neighbors and newly arriving immigrants, and working to build local economies that don’t rely on incarceration.

Real safety comes from strong, inclusive and resilient communities with resources to support our collective well-being. People should be welcomed into the United States and allowed to work and contribute to their families and communities. Instead of investing billions every year on law enforcement and incarceration systems that target, surveil, detain and abuse thousands of people, we can invest in health care programs, affordable housing, education, and more to support communities nationwide.

On the national scale, we are exploring strategies to move us away from outsized investment in so-called national security infrastructures and toward policies that lift us all up and address the root causes of our most pressing issues.

To make this future a reality, we need a mainstream movement, media and leaders who refuse to echo the demonizing narratives that have become normalized in the U.S.