On the debate stage tonight, Donald Trump will repeat his bigoted, xenophobic rhetoric and advocate for racist immigration policies that have become the hallmark of his campaign — if not his entire personality.
Earlier this year, Trump lobbied congressional Republicans to vote against the bipartisan immigration reform bill because he thought addressing immigration would hurt his campaign. Trump told his supporters and the media to blame him if the bill never passed Congress.
Trump needs Congress to kick the can down the road on immigration reform so he can continue to tell lies about undocumented immigrants taking jobs and homes from Americans.
Trump’s strategy is to hope voters forget how his racist rhetoric and inhumane policies of his first term delivered more chaos than solutions at the border.
Take a look at Trump’s real record on immigration:
- Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy and accompanying indefinite detention rule resulted in more than 15,000 migrant children being held in U.S. custody in 2018, and over 70,000 migrant children being held in 2019. Trump’s family separation policy cost taxpayers at least $80 million.
- At least seven children died in border custody, three of whom had died due to flu-related complications; the number of sexual abuse allegations from migrant children in custody rose; and cases of PTSD have appeared in migrant children.
- After changing the separation policy, the Trump administration failed to reunite all migrant families separated at the border.
- Earlier this year, Trump defended his morally reprehensible immigration policy of separating families at the southern border.
- Trump ordered a border wall to be built on the U.S.-Mexico border and helped shut down the government after he did not get the funding necessary to build the wall.
- Trump stated Mexico would pay for its construction – they did not and forced Trump to divert billions from the U.S. military to pay for the wall.
- Trump’s government shutdown cost the U.S. economy $11 billion.
- By February of 2020, Trump had diverted a total of $3.8 billion from the Department of Defense to build his border wall. According to the Washington Post, Trump planned to give himself a re-election talking point by taking a total of $7.2 billion from the Pentagon budget for his border wall project, five times the amount authorized by Congress in the 2020 budget.
- Trump’s plans would bring the total amount of funds budgeted for the wall to $18.4 billion — but according to a Customs and Border Protection report, less than 100 miles of newly constructed wall was built as of December 2021.
- In his first month in office, Trump signed an executive order banning entry from seven majority-Muslim countries. The executive order included a provision prioritizing refugee claims made by “religious minorities” of Muslim-majority countries.
- In her dissent as part of a 5-4 vote on Trump’s executive orders, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Trump’s policy was still the Muslim ban Trump talked about on the campaign trail, but “now masquerades behind a façade of national-security concerns.”
- Stephen Miller, a top aide to Trump, was revealed to have “pushed racist immigration stories.” Miller was the architect of several anti-immigration policies for the Trump administration.
Published: Sep 10, 2024