Scapegoating legal immigrants is no way to win an election | Opinion

In 2017, then-President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security began searching for “news reports of Haitian criminals,” hoping to use the information to end temporary protection from deportation for certain Haitians in the United States.

However, little evidence could be found, despite pressure from DHS Secretary John Kelly on his subordinates to search more thoroughly.

They are still searching.

Mark Dow is the author of “American Gulag: Inside US Immigration Prisons.” (Courtesy of Mark Dow)

By now you know that candidates Trump and JD Vance are spreading lies about Haitian immigrants (legal immigrants by the way). They are also lying about Venezuelans and other nationalities. And they are hoping that you are angry enough about life’s problems to believe everything they tell you about these scapegoats.

They also hope that you won’t notice that you believe their rhetoric and thereby ignore law enforcement.

Let’s start with those recent lies about Haitians and animal abuse. According to the Springfield, Ohio police, there are no credible reports of what Trump and Vance keep repeating. In fact, the Springfield police say there are not even credible reports of Haitian immigrants throwing trash on the streets.

In a book called “Haiti’s Bad Press,” anthropologist Robert Lawless provides a catalog of myths about Haiti and Haitians that are still popular today. Topics include disease, cannibals, zombies, laziness, and voodoo. All of these prejudices, Lawless writes, are about “evil and darkness.” Lawless commented on how even sympathetic observers can absorb these prejudices.

The Trump/Vance effort is a calculated exploitation of these prejudices. They want disturbing images to be etched in your memory. That’s why, no matter what question Trump asks, he will tell you that “immigrant crime” is “ruining our country.”

But there’s that problem of evidence again.

According to a group of researchers on urban crime rates, “Although there are always individual exceptions … immigrants commit fewer crimes on average than U.S.-born Americans.” Last year, a Stanford University study provided “the most comprehensive evidence to date that immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born individuals.” This year, Northwestern University came to the same conclusion.

Finally, there is drug smuggling at the border. Because Republican candidates want voters to be afraid, they are turning to fentanyl deaths in particular to exploit grief and turn us against immigrants.

But most of the fentanyl crossing the border is smuggled in by U.S. citizens.

The American Immigration Council reviewed reports from the Drug Enforcement Agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection. They found “overwhelming evidence that the vast majority of fentanyl trafficking involves U.S. citizens smuggling it into the country for U.S. citizens to consume.”

Sometimes, these civilian smugglers are even U.S. Border Patrol agents. The Justice Department has successfully prosecuted agents in recent years for smuggling fentanyl and cocaine into the country.

Fentanyl deaths and drug cartels are real, and many voters have legitimate questions about the border. Still, “there is no measurable link between migrants and fentanyl smuggling.”

But that reality—like the reality of peaceful Haitian newcomers to Springfield, and of immigrants in general—won’t help Republicans scare you into voting for them in November.

Mark Dow is the author of “American Gulag: Inside US Immigration Prisons.” In the early 1990s, he worked at Miami’s Haitian Refugee Center. He lives in Brooklyn.