From quite literally the moment Donald Trump descended on the country’s presidential campaigns in 2015, he has made misinformation and demagoguery about migrant crime his political calling card.
But even in that context, Trump’s comments about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, purportedly eating pets break ground.
Relying on little more than the thinnest of rumors — and despite his claim being debunked to his face as tens of millions of Americans watched during Tuesday’s presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris — Trump has continued to train a spotlight on a very specific group of people in a very specific place. And he has declined to back down despite threats on Springfield’s city hall, a school and other buildings. Trump on Friday even pledged a mass deportation operation in Springfield, despite the Haitian immigrants being there legally.
Given the laughingstock this has become and the ugly concoction that is apparently brewing in Springfield, it’s worth asking: Why? It’s one thing to demagogue an issue; it’s another to do so in such a ridiculous and potentially dangerous way.
The apparent reason for the continued gambit is that it focuses attention on the issue Trump views as his political silver bullet: migrant crime. Springfield is, after all, a town that has recently seen a large influx of Haitian immigrants. If Trump’s version of events caught on, it could be employed as shorthand to justify his migrant crime strategy. And we’ve seen how Trump’s misinformation can catch on, despite all the fact-checking — at least with his devoted supporters.
But it’s not at all evident that this is nearly the electoral winner Trump seems to think it is. Besides the significant moral concerns, the downside is that Trump could undercut the entire enterprise by making a claim that is specific and debunkable enough to give lie to the rest of his migrant-crime rhetoric — at least with middle-of-the-road voters.
It’s been evident for a while that this is more than Trump repeating a rumor. It’s a campaign strategy. The strategy didn’t start with Trump, after all. His running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), first posted about it on Monday. (Vance before Tuesday’s debate conceded that the rumors might be wrong, just hours before Trump stated them as fact.)
It also flows from plenty of things Trump has said before.
This is a former president who, after all, effectively launched his political career by falsely casting Barack Obama as lying about his foreign birth. Trump launched his 2016 campaign by claiming Mexico was sending drugs, rapists and criminals across the U.S.-Mexico border. (“And some, I assume, are good people,” he added, suggesting those “good people” were a relatively small share.)
Trump has also targeted Haitians for particular derision, reportedly saying they “all have AIDS” and asking why we allow immigrants from “shithole countries” like Haiti. As the 2024 campaign has worn on, Trump has cast immigrants as a criminal scourge on our country — even as the evidence shows they commit less crime than native-born Americans.
Despite this long history, it’s not at all clear the approach has paid electoral dividends.
Yes, Trump won the 2016 election while playing up his border wall, but he also faced one of the most unpopular opponents in modern history, in Hillary Clinton. And every major election since then has proved disappointing for the GOP — including in 2022, when Republicans keyed on a border surge and crime as their potential game changers. (The president’s party almost always loses substantial ground in midterm elections, but Democrats had a historically good election against that backdrop.)
Just because Republicans didn’t win doesn’t mean these issues didn’t assist them. But there is little evidence that migrant crime is a pervasive concern for Americans.
There is no question that anti-immigrant sentiment surged amid record-setting illegal border crossings in recent years. Gallup data has shown a significant rise in the percentage of Americans who want immigration decreased. And as of June last year, 47 percent of Americans said migrants were making crime worse, vs. just 5 percent who said they were making it better.
But 47 percent isn’t a majority. And other data — while limited — suggests this isn’t a huge point of emphasis for Americans:
- A late 2022 PRRI poll showed only around one-third of Americans agreed at least “somewhat” with the idea that immigrants were increasing crime in local communities.
- A May Reuters-Ipsos poll showed just 22 percent said immigrants were more likely to be criminals than people born in the United States.
- And a March AP-NORC poll showed nearly 6 in 10 Americans said the risk of migrant crime was “minor” or “not a risk at all.” And just 3 in 10 thought immigrants were having any kind of “major impact” on their own communities — a number that suggests this might not be a top-tier personal concern even for many of those worried about it.
There’s also the fact that illegal border crossings have dropped sharply in recent months, to four-year lows, perhaps reducing the import of the broader issue.
That doesn’t mean these numbers won’t rise as Trump focuses like a laser on this issue. But it doesn’t exactly suggest this is a sleeping electoral giant of an issue, either.
It’s just as possible that Trump is running out of ideas, and so his strategy is to go back to the well, up the ante and the misinformation, and hope it turns out better for his party than it has before.
The potential downside is that the many Americans who aren’t predisposed to Trump’s version of migrant crime could see Trump’s misinformation for what it is and dismiss the rest of what he says about the subject.
And all the while, Springfield twists in the wind.
