On stage at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, supporters of former President Trump painted migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border as dangerous gang members, sex traffickers and terrorists who put American families “at great risk.”
“Joe Biden’s surge has also led to a surge in violent crimes committed by illegal migrants,” a narrator says in a video shown at the convention. “Horrific crimes, murders, gang attacks against our police, child sex crimes and the brutal killing of a nursing student on her college campus.”
Days earlier, Trump was nearly killed by a U.S. citizen. Thomas Matthew Crooks was registered to vote in Pennsylvania, and only citizens may register.
In the wake of the attempted assassination, Trump’s campaign messaging continued undeterred, casting immigrants as the source of violence in the United States. Yet the shooting that left Trump with an injured ear was allegedly committed by someone who fits the typical profile of perpetrators of targeted violence — a young, white man described by some former classmates as a bullied loner.
“Targeted violence is often done by angry people who don’t have well thought out narratives but are more impulsive and idiosyncratic,” said Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at CSU San Bernardino.
He said said most targeted violence is committed by young, white men in their teens and early 20s. Studies show immigrants commit less crime than U.S.-born citizens.
Using data collected between 2012 and 2018 from the Texas Department of Public Safety, researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that undocumented immigrants had substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens across a number of felony offenses including violent crimes, drug crimes and property crimes.
A similar study by Alex Nowrasteh at the Libertarian Cato Institute found that undocumented immigrants had a homicide rate 14% below that of native-born citizens. Texas is the only state to keep data on the immigration status of people arrested for specific crimes.
Ran Abramitzky, a Stanford University professor who helped lead a nationally representative study comparing incarceration rates among immigrants and U.S.-born citizens from 1870 to 2020, recently told The Times that “as a group, immigrants have had lower incarceration rates than the U.S.-born for 150 years.”
But political fear mongering isn’t responsive to facts, Levin said, which is why the GOP will continue blaming immigrants for violent crime.
“The anecdotal image, the scary image of somebody who is different is going to be what sells that fear,” he said. “Political theater involves the construction, or at least amplification or exaggeration of grievances, and that’s problematic.”
Even though the man who shot Trump doesn’t fit the profile of who he blames for crime, the shooting at his Pennsylvania rally Saturday could make it easier for Republicans to pitch voters on a broader narrative about the need for law and order. That could wind up conflating violent extremism by American citizens with violent crimes committed by immigrants.
“I think there absolutely will be an attempt to connect the former president’s attempted assassination to paint that we live in this dark, fearful American carnage type of world,” said Democratic strategist Maria Cardona. “He will try to paint everything with one broad brushstroke.”
Democrats can use that spin to their advantage, she said, by pointing out the truth: that border arrests are down, crime is down, and immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born citizens.
GOP strategist Matt Terrill said crime and safety were already top concerns for many voters, who look at the issue of security holistically — taking into account not just immigration, but also concerns including violence at protests and domestic terrorism.
“What occurred on Saturday only pushes those issues of crime and security further into the fold,” he said. “What they’re looking for right now is someone who can lead on that issue.”
The Trump campaign and the Republican National Convention did not respond to a request for comment.
The top priority listed in the Republican Party platform, which will be voted on this week, is “SEAL THE BORDER, AND STOP THE MIGRANT INVASION.”
“We will end the Invasion at the Southern Border, restore Law and Order, protect American Sovereignty, and deliver a Safe and Prosperous Future for all Americans,” the platform states.
Trump himself has echoed statements by Adolf Hitler in saying that immigrants who enter illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and plans to greatly expand detention capacity and deport millions of people per year.
At the convention Tuesday, speaker after speaker zeroed in on migration as a threat to public safety.
“Look at the border,” said Trump’s former rival Nikki Haley. “It’s the single, biggest threat Americans face.”
“We can’t survive the dramatic increases in violence, crime and drugs that the Democrats’ policies have brought upon our communities,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson. “And we cannot allow the many millions of illegal aliens they’ve allowed to cross our borders to harm our citizens, drain our resources or disrupt our elections.”
“Open borders are often portrayed as compassionate and virtuous,” said Michael Morin, the brother of Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old mother of five who was killed while jogging in Maryland last August. The man charged in her killing had entered the U.S. illegally.
“But there is nothing compassionate about allowing violent criminals into our country and robbing children of their mother,” Michael Morin said.
Levin, the extremism expert at Cal State San Bernardino, said Trump’s near-assassination and the resulting messaging makes people more susceptible to conspiracies and stereotypes.
“There’s a fear narrative behind it, and viciously combined with it is an array of purported assailants which threaten American tradition — in other words, these people are coming to our country and they speak other languages and practice other religions,” he said.
Sonja Diaz, who was executive director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute and now runs the Latina Futures 2050 Lab, believes the fallout from the attempted assassination of Trump will reinvigorate the idea of law and order, which could reinforce exclusionary law enforcement policies that negatively affect immigrants.
“That rhetoric has been an ‘Us versus them’ and that ‘them’ has really squarely been situated at the U.S.-Mexico border,” she said.