Even after 11 Jewish Americans were senselessly murdered over the lies President Trump has spread about a group of migrant Guatemalans traveling to the United States in search of safety and a better life for the children among them, Trump has continued to double down on those lies.
Note: coming to the United States to seek asylum is not illegal. Coming in through a port of entry to apply for asylum is not illegal. Nothing that anyone in this “caravan” has done so far has been illegal.
There was a confrontation between the migrants, an ever-dwindling group trying desperately to escape violence and poverty, and the Mexican police. The “very tough” migrants’ only weapons were rocks and sticks. The only deaths were those of the migrants. Trump’s Twitter fans began posting frightening photos of the encounter, declaring their sympathy with Mexican law enforcement for their brutal treatment by this gang-member-laden migrant caravan.
None of those photos were related to the clash between police and migrants, though. The main photo is from 2012.
‘The above-displayed photographs appear to be yet another attempt to smear this group of refugees and stoke fears over immigration. These pictures do not capture police officers who were brutalized by members of the immigrant caravan making its way toward the United States in October 2018 — they’re all several years old and depict the aftermath of altercations between police officers and protesters in Mexico.’
This is just more fear-mongering by the president, and his supporters are eating it up. However, this is a very dangerous form of fear-mongering, which the U.S. has already seen.
Trump saw it, too. After all, he forced himself, uninvited, into the funerals of the people his rhetoric has killed.
Twitter wasn’t buying Trump’s nonsense. Read some of their comments below:
Featured image via Flickr by Matt Johnson under a Creative Commons license
