Donald Trump makes a border crisis before a major election

Two hours after the start of the New England Patriots football match with the Green Bay Packers on Sunday night, NBC aired a new version of an advertisement largely rejected by President Donald Trump. The 30-second spot, which featured the image of an unauthorized immigrant cop killer, urged viewers to vote for the Republican party to end an "invasion" of poor Central American migrants crossing Mexico to the United States.

It was the closing speech for an administration that had spent the week leading up to the midterm elections to simulate an immigration crisis and blame the Democrats.

Almost every day last week, the White House placed immigration at the center of national politics. The Pentagon has announced plans to send some 5,200 troops to the Mexican border. Trump said he was considering eliminating the constitutional guarantee of citizenship conferred by the birthright by decree. He announced a forthcoming plan to prohibit migrants who cross the border illegally from seeking asylum and to detain them indefinitely in tent cities. To hear him speak at a press conference Thursday, it would appear that the United States is facing a wave of illegal immigration.

None of this reflects the reality. In the past eight years, arrests for illegal border crossing have reached their lowest level since the 1970s.

But that fits in with the strategy of a president who's propelled to the White House by making specious immigration demands. Faced with an electoral cycle that endangers the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, the president's message is clear: voters must accuse Democrats of a non-existent disaster at the border.

The announcement – which NBC abandoned, with Fox and Facebook, after a violent reaction – is part of Trump's strategy to raise fears of the caravan within its base. CNN refused to broadcast it, calling it "racist".

It's also downright wrong.

Luis Bracamontes, the unauthorized immigrant in Trump's advertising, was sentenced in 2014 for the murder of two police officers in Sacramento and has nothing to do with the caravan.

The original version of the advertisement that Trump posted on Twitter was even more dishonest. After showing disturbed Bracamontes excerpts in court to explain how he would escape and kill other people, he claimed that the Democrats let him in and had him enter the country. let stay. he then the video is turned towards the caravan, giving the impression that it is composed of similar criminals.

In fact, no one has let in Bracamontes. He was deported twice, one in 1997 and another in 2001.

Some advertising critics noted that the last time he had illegally entered the country seems to have been during George W. Bush's presidency. He did not leave Bracamontes either. The fact is that Bracamontes has escaped law enforcement, which is not remarkable in itself. The success rate of people trying to illegally enter the country repeatedly never dropped below 96% until 2008, according to the report. Migration project in Mexico, the most comprehensive sociological database for tracking migration across the US-Mexico border.

To imply that the migrant caravan is made up of dangerous criminals like Bracamontes is just as untenable as the assertion that the Democrats let it in. Among the many thousands of people crossing Mexico in the main caravan are 2,300 children, according to UNICEF USA. Migrants gather in caravans not as a kind of invading force, but as a means of seeking to protect themselves in large numbers from the traffickers of human beings.

The main US border challenge is how to effectively deal with an increase in the number of Central American families and children who apply for asylum or seek other forms of humanitarian relief after deportation. But this trend dates from 2014, so it is not new.

After the midterm elections, it will not be clear if Trump will follow through on his many promises on immigration. But with less than 24 hours before polling day, the most immediate question is how voters will react to their statements.

Mass migration from Mexico had ceased seven years before Trump launched his campaign for the presidency by accusing Mexican immigrants of criminals and rapists and accusing Democrats of "an open border" of being a crisis. immigration that did not exist. The strategy helped get him elected in 2016. On Tuesday, we'll see if it works for him again.