Trump seizes a caravan of migrants to elevate Republican voters

OMAHA – The guests of the Republican Women's Business and Professional Women forum were half-way to dessert when Representative Don Bacon offered to answer their questions.

"A thousand immigrants are returning to our border. From Honduras, "said a woman. "And we can not stop them without giving them asylum."

Then a second woman asked questions about immigration. And a third. And a fourth. And a fifth.

Mr. Bacon, a centrist Republican seeking re-election in the only Nebraska district that voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and sent a Democrat to Congress as recently as 2014, struggled to advance the conversation, alluding to to "a collapse of the rule of law" and its support for the immigration measures that the Democrats had blocked.

But soon, the banquet hall, filled with a few dozen people who appeared mostly white and aged from 60 to 70 years old, cried out, chanting "Build the Wall!" Build the wall!

Just two weeks away from an election that threatens to eliminate Republicans from power in the House of Representatives and to wipe out any hope of conservative immigration reform, the party, led by the president Trump, leans more aggressively on the dark images of undocumented immigrants galvanize voters.

Mr Trump, whose political appeal among his main constituents is largely based on warnings about illegal immigration as a threat to US security, sovereignty and identity, has intensified his attacks inflammatory and radical against Latin American migrants while he was traveling in the country campaigning to save the Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

Its renewed emphasis on the issue reflects the conviction of both party strategists that Republican candidates often benefit if they associate illegal immigration with crime, economic insecurity and terrorism. s tackle the problem.

Trump is also trying to link the issue to another powerful mid-term factor: himself. While the fate of his legislative agenda is at stake, Mr. Trump, without presenting any evidence, accuses political opponents of orchestrating an invasion of foreigners so he and the Republicans lose in November.

On Twitter, He called a group of displaced migrants heading north from Latin America and being "run by the Democratic Party" and "an assault on our country". Later, at a rally in Montana for Matt Rosedale, Republican candidate in the Senate, he accused his enemies of funding the caravan.

"A lot of money has been spent on people going up and trying to get to the border on polling day, because they think it's a bad thing for us," he said. the crowd. (How that would be negative, he remained unexplained, although he falsely attributed the defeat of the 2016 popular vote to the illegal vote of undocumented immigrants.)

In one Twitter post Saturday, Mr Trump condemned the Democrats for their "obstruction" to the reform of immigration. "Look at the unnecessary pain and suffering that they cause," he wrote, imploring Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, "Call me!"

It did not seem that this call was coming. Democrats, as part of a tacit acknowledgment of the power of Trump's rhetoric, mostly refrained from directly responding to his unfounded accusations. In a joint statement Saturday, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer said the president was "desperate to change the subject of health care to immigration".

Immigration has become a "critical issue" that motivates voters almost as an approximation of what they think of the president, said Sam Nunberg, a former aide to Trump's presidential campaign, has been studying how to galvanize grassroots voters with immigration hawks, such as Stephen K. Bannon, the former chief strategist of the White House.

Across the country – from states with small, foreign-born populations like Montana to states where immigrants are an important political group like Florida – the Republicans borrowed from Mr. Trump's playbook. In Indiana, they attack Senator Joe Donnelly, a vulnerable Democrat, under the name of "Mexico Joe," a reference to a doubtful accusation that he would have benefited from the outsourced jobs of his brother. In Missouri, Josh Hawley has repeatedly accused his opponent, Senator Claire McCaskill, of promoting "open borders," a misleading term that the president often uses against the Democrats to falsely assert that they're in trouble. Are opposed to improving border security.

The story of "The Caravan", a long chain of Latin American migrants who take refuge each year in the north, caused a sensation in April on the right. A smaller group crossed Mexico and attracted for the first time the attention of the media. the eye of the president.

Last week, for example, Mr. Trump posted video of a crowd of aligned Spanish speakers receiving money, presumably the payments he was talking about in Montana.

"Can you believe that and what the Democrats are allowing our country to do?", The president said on Twitter.

But before Mr. Trump sent his tweet, the representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who is a declared ally of the President, distributed the video, suggesting that it revealed a Democratic conspiracy founded by George Soros, the billionaire and donor progressive philanthropist, aiming to invade the country with immigrants a few weeks before the elections. In the right-wing media, Mr. Soros is often the hidden architect of the caravan. There is no evidence that he played a role in financing caravans.

Most Republicans are not unhappy with legal immigration, according to polls. An independent survey conducted by Grinnell College at the end of August and early September found that only 21% of Republicans said the country had too many legal immigrants, compared to 12% of Democrats.

The Grinnell poll also revealed that Republicans were more likely to worry about illegal immigration. Fifty-two percent mistakenly thought that undocumented immigrants had committed more violent crime than the general population, compared with 28% of Americans.

In the poll for Bannon, the issue of illegal immigration significantly affected voters 'perceptions of both parties, helping to reduce the Democrats' 9-point advantage to 2 points.

Democrats have noticed a similar dynamic. Polls conducted during the summer by the Center for American Progress and the Centrist Third Way revealed that, particularly in the states and districts won by Mr. Trump in 2016, voters were concerned about the number of people in the city. idea of ​​sanctuary cities – jurisdictions limiting their cooperation with the federal immigration authorities. The results indicate that these voters tend to be persuaded by misleading attacks that describe sanctuary cities as lawless places where undocumented immigrants can commit crimes without consequences. The researchers found that the attacks had been right for college graduates, but that white voters with no university education, senior women and independents had appealed.