Sex trafficking, lying in fact and immigration

Thursday, Katie Britt, Alabama’s junior senator, gave a Republican response to the State of the Union address. His over-the-top acting has been the subject of widespread derision; That’s good for late night television, but I’m not joining that chorus.

Instead, what I want to do is focus on the heart of Britt’s comments, a deeply misleading narrative about sex trafficking that she used to attack the president. Joe Biden. History involves their use, which turns out when the events in Mexico George W. Bush was president, it wasn’t technically a lie because he didn’t outright say it happened in the United States under Biden. However, he said: “We don’t agree with this happening in a third world country. This is the United States of America and it’s time we start acting like it. “President Biden’s border crisis is an embarrassment.”

This is a clear attempt to deceive (the moral equivalent of a lie) and the word caution actually indicates that she knew she was being deceived and wanted to escape if someone deceived her.

However, to understand the meaning of his real lie, we must put it in a political context.

In recent months, there has been a marked shift in Republican rhetoric, away from attacks on Biden’s economy and toward dire warnings about it. “Immigration Offenses”.

The shift has been forced in part by the fact that Biden’s economy is doing pretty well these days: inflation is falling and unemployment is near its lowest level in 50 years. Politically, the bad economy narrative seems to be fading.

If I were a Republican strategist, I would be particularly concerned about the changing tone of news coverage. This Federal Reserve San Francisco maintains a daily “news sentiment” index. In the summer of 2023, even though the economy was already doing well, the rate was as low as it had been in the depths of the Great Depression. However, it has since skyrocketed to levels almost comparable to those prevailing on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Republicans, then, need a new issue. And indeed illegal attempts to cross our southern border seem to have increased. So there are strategic reasons for Donald Trump and his party to exaggerate the dangers of immigration crime, and for Trump and his allies to maximize the fear factor by blocking bipartisan legislation that would help secure the border.

My guess, however, is that Trump’s speeches on immigration crime are not entirely strategic. He has a history of being obsessed with alleged crimes committed by dark-skinned people, which meets his demand after the arrest of five people. Central Park

, who were eventually freed from reinstating the death penalty. And his claims about the dangers posed by immigrants are so extreme that they may well backfire.

The other day, for example, he declared: “I will stop the killing, I will stop the bloodshed, I will end the suffering of our people, the looting of our cities, the plundering of our cities, the rape of our citizens and the conquest of our country.”. What towns and cities exactly were pillaged and plundered? Did Attila the Hun stop by to visit me when I wasn’t looking?

Yes, figuring out how best to secure our borders is a real problem, but the data simply doesn’t show that immigration crime is a crisis. In fact, homicides in the United States increased in 2020, a year when Trump was still president and apprehensions on the southern border were much lower. In contrast, over the past two years, homicide rates have declined even as border activity has increased.

So what do you do when the numbers don’t support your dystopian imaginings? You focus on the most horrific personal stories.

Without a doubt, the killing of Laken Riley, for which an immigrant in the country illegally is charged, is devastating. But in a country as large as ours, whatever group you name, it is almost always possible to find examples of unspeakable tragedies involving individual members. There are probably more than 10 million illegal immigrants in the United States. However, according to available evidence, immigrants are less likely than native-born Americans to commit crimes.

In any case, the wave of immigration crimes — the “looting of our cities” that Trump constantly decries — is a myth. But that may be a myth that Trump believes, and the possibility that he is actually sincere in this case is worrisome.

because? Because if Trump really believes that immigrants are an existential threat, if he wins in November, as president he can go ahead with his plan for widespread raids and mass deportations, which will most likely ensnare many people who look like immigrants. in the country illegally.

So don’t dismiss Britt’s comments as just an example of bad acting. He could be the harbinger of a reign of terror that will wreak havoc on America.

© The New York Times 2024