Trump stokes fear about migrants driving up crime rate, despite data debunking that

Donald Trump launched his political career in June 2015 with a brazen and bogus appeal to American fear, based on a distortion that immigrants to this country bring us only crime and mayhem.

Now, more than nine years later ? having won and lost the presidency ? Trump is still peddling the same old lies about why people come to this country while asking Americans to return him to the White House. After all this time, he's still just slinging the same-old, same-old slop.

Trump blends disinformation about the country's crime rate with anecdotal details about individual offenses involving migrants who entered this country illegally to produce a twisted fiction that we’re all under siege at all times from invaders. In this false narrative, Trump casts himself as the only person who can save us.

That noxious brew of narcissism and nativism has proved to be appealing to some in those nine years. But there are plenty of studies that debunk the notion that migrants increase our crime rate.

Trump would never let the truth get in the way of a scary story.

Remember when Republicans listened to Trump and killed the border security deal?

Here's a little news that directly conflicts with Trump's claims about immigration: After a series of surges in illegal crossings at America's southern border, apprehensions of migrants there in July dropped to the lowest level during the Biden administration.

But good news doesn't serve Trump's fearmongering campaign for power. So he went to Arizona on Thursday and stood near the border, where he claimed that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had "unleashed a deadly plague of migrant crime on our country."

How would Trump address the problem at the border? He's already shown us his plan ? do nothing. That was his command earlier this year when a bipartisan border security bill was crafted in the U.S. Senate by one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress.

Trump's rampant lies about crime: Crime has declined since he was president. He insists on lying about that.

Trump realized that an accomplishment like that while Democrats held the White House would not help his bid for president. So he demanded that his party kill its own deal. And Republicans did. Just like that.

Trump, at the border Thursday, tried to claim that the legislation he had killed wasn't bipartisan. Like so much of what Trump says, it's a lie that requires his supporters to just ignore what we all see and hear and know.

Harris, while accepting her party's presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention a few hours later in Chicago, called out Trump for killing the legislation while vowing to rejuvenate it if she wins in November.

"I refuse to play politics with our security," Harris said, leaning into her experience as a local and state prosecutor during the speech.

You guessed it. More of Trump lying about immigration.

Brianna Seid, a lawyer at The Brennan Center For Justice, told me the individual stories about crimes against America shared by Trump "should absolutely be taken seriously." Even so, his larger tale about migrants driving up crime is unsupported in decades of criminal justice research, she said.

A more recent example: Seid and her colleagues studied undocumented migrants who were bused to New York by southern, conservative governors in look-at-me political stunts in recent years. The researchers found no surge in crime after those migrants arrived.

And painting all migrants as criminals can influence whether they seek help from law enforcement when they are victims of crimes.

"Perpetuating harmful stereotypes that there is this 'migrant crime wave' could have the impact of fostering hostility towards their communities, which then impacts their likelihood to go to the police," Seid told me.

Trump pitches his flawed linkage of immigration and crime to his fact-free claim that countries in South America are emptying their prisons and sending inmates to America. Seid noted that the total prison population in South America has seen a 224% increase since 2000.

How can prisons be emptied when their population has tripled? That only checks out if facts don't matter.

The Trump campaign is trying desperately to convince voters of a lie

Trump is playing to his Republican base when he portrays migrants as predators. But he's hoping that message catches on with independent and Democratic voters.

The Pew Research Center reported that a majority ? 57% ? of U.S. adults in a January poll said "the large number of migrants seeking to enter the country leads to more crime."

Broken down by party and ideology, 85% of Republicans and 90% of self-described conservatives felt that way, while just 31% of Democrats and 21% of self-described liberals agreed.

"So this is a huge partisan difference, but it is notable that a majority of Americans do think that there's a connection between more immigrants and more crime, even if the data may not actually find that to be true, " John Gramlich, associate director at the Pew Research Center, told me.

Trump's lead in Pennsylvania is gone. Vance's solution: Just don't believe it. No, really.

Apart from crime, a significant majority in that poll ? 78% ? saw a large influx of migrants as a serious issue, with 45% calling it a crisis and 32% calling it a major problem.

This is what Trump is trying to exploit ? a perception among the electorate that crumbles when contrasted with the available empirical evidence. He keeps pushing the lie while lying about the evidence.

Is fearmongering the only tactic Trump has in this campaign?

I wrote in the past week about how Trump spreads disinformation about American crime rates, which have been falling since he left office, to smear Democrats as unwilling to do what it takes to keep the country safe. He attacks federal agencies and their data when the math disproves his claims.

He has linked those issues ? crime and immigration ? because he only has fear to offer to American voters. He's already shown us that he sees solutions as worthless if they don't directly and immediately benefit him.

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The Democratic presidential nominee, in her speech Thursday, said Trump would use a second tern and "the immense powers of the presidency of the United States not to improve your life, not to strengthen our national security, but to serve the only client he has ever had: himself."

On the issues of crime and immigration, Trump unintentionally does all the work to prove Harris is right about that.

Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump loves to tell about a migrant crime wave only he can stop. Lies.