An ongoing theme for former President Donald Trump and his presidential campaign ties immigrants to crime.
Speakers like Texas Senator Ted Cruz emphasized the point during his time on stage at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee earlier this month.
“Today, as a result of your Biden's presidency,” Senator Cruz said, “your family is less safe. Your children are less safe.”
National statistics, though, don’t support that argument. Immigration doesn’t correlate to a rise in crime.
For Jaye DeBates, the Chairman of the Putnam County Illinois Republicans, the senator's speech was a highlight for him.
“I just like the whole thing,” De Bates said. “I just love the guy. So, everything resonates with me.”
Cruz repeated a common falsehood during his speech that noncitizens will be voting in the upcoming election.
“Democrats cynically decided,” Cruz said, “[that] they wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children.”
This message resonated with Brian Kasal, a Northern Illinois University alum and a Republican committeeman in Chicago.
“The Democrats are losing votes at every level,” Kasal said. “They think they're going to get votes from all the immigrants that are coming in. And they're bringing in many more than we ever brought in before.”
On immigration, the party adopted a proposal to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, known as DACA, and launch a mass deportation operation.
During the convention speakers on the stage and delegates on the floor often cited 11.1 million people as the number to describe the recent wave of migration from the U.S.-Mexico border - but the number isn’t correct.
The Pew Research Center calculated that number to describe the number of undocumented immigrants since 2022. It’s below the peak of 12.2 million in 2007.
Challenging falsehoods
Northern Illinois University Sociology and Latino Studies Professor Simon Weffer-Elizondo says disinformation about immigration poses a problem for Democrats and immigrant rights groups.
“If you spend all your time for and checking and countering the false narratives and false numbers,” he said, “you're not necessarily making any progress on convincing people what the alternative is.”
He adds Democrats haven’t made a strong case for an alternative.
“If you put a poll up,” he said, “and asked, ‘Do you know the premise of the last Democratic proposal on immigration reform?’ I think it'd be like 98% of people would say ‘no,’ because we haven't heard anything.”
In June, President Biden signed an executive order which put in place measures to temporarily shut down the border.
Now, the Biden Administration earlier did make an attempt to pass a border security measure in Congress, but most Republicans, at the behest of Trump, voted against what had been a bipartisan effort.
During the convention, the Illinois delegation sat behind the Texas delegation, who sported cowboy hats and huge belt buckles commemorating the event. Under Texas Governor Greg Abbott's direction, Illinois has received buses carrying asylum seekers from the southern border.
Lack of comprehensive immigration policy
Weffer-Elizondo said the lack of a comprehensive policy from Democrats, is a weakness that Republicans have been able to take advantage.
“That's the thing about Trump's narrative,” he said, “in the absence of anything else from the Democrats, that vacuum is going to be filled by whatever he peddles, whatever bad statistics and even worse policy.”
He said any immigration policy must understand the varying drivers of immigration.
“Had there been no invasion of Ukraine, we wouldn't have seen this spike in Ukrainians coming into the United States,” he said, "If we hadn’t seen the political and economic situation worsen in Venezuela, we wouldn’t see this mass migration out.”
He added that any policy ought to include an increase in immigration judges and a streamlining of immigration procedures, such as the application for work permits.
“We have this backlog and there's all these people that are just waiting to hear if their asylum case is gonna go through,” said Weffer-Elizondo, “but they have no way to get a job because we still haven't revised the laws around the ability to obtain a work permit.”
Illinois lawmakers including Gov. JB Pritzker have called on the Biden Administration to expedite the work authorization process for migrants who have permission to stay in the U.S. but have to wait an extended period of time before they're granted a work permit.
Weffer-Elizondo said Trump’s negative views on immigrants have changed how the party talks about immigration.
“I think we’ve seen that shift rightward,” he said, “and that’s going to be around for a while until we can get some traction on creating fundamental reforms.”
In August, the Democratic party will hold its national convention in Chicago, during which they’ll have a chance to showcase their position on immigration.
