President Donald Trump loves drumming up fear of and hatred for immigrants, despite consistent lacks of the kind of data he claims is there illustrating some kind of security threats from their communities. This Thursday, he rushed to Twitter to tout arrests of almost two dozen individuals affiliated with the violent gang MS-13, which he has repeatedly and consistently sought to depict as emblematic of an in reality non-existent pandemic of supposed immigrant violence.
Trump shared — seeming to blatantly lie about how long the arrested individuals were in the United States, claiming ten years when it’s been reported as four:
‘Most of the MS-13 Gang members indicted & arrested in L.A. were illegal aliens, 19 of 22. They are said to have killed many people in the most brutal fashion. They should never have been allowed in our Country for so long, 10 years. We have arrested and deported thousands of gang members, in particular MS-13. ICE and Border Patrol are doing a great job!’
It is very true that members of MS-13 have participated in brutal atrocities, including murder, dismemberment, and more perpetrated by those recently arrested in L.A. What’s blatantly false, however, is the implication — sometimes made very explicit — that these crimes represent some kind of rising epidemic level threat against Americans posed by immigrant communities. MS-13 is an American gang in the first place and was founded and is still based in the U.S., and these numbers Trump likes to throw out completely ignore the massive amounts of heinous violent crime that white, native-born Americans including plenty of Trump supporters regularly commit. Almost 8,000 people have died from gun violence in the United States since the beginning of this year including casualties from at least 232 mass shooting incidents. The issue is the crime, and has nothing whatsoever to do with MS-13 gang members’ ethnic background, despite the president’s racist frenzy!
Trump trying to tie MS-13 to immigrant communities is far from his only racist effort, though. Just recently, he asserted that progressive women of color newly serving in Congress should “go back where they came from” instead of criticizing his administration. At a more recent rally, he happily presided over the crowd chanting “Send her back!” targeting one of those women, Minnesota Congressman Ilhan Omar.
Check out Twitter’s response below…
Featured Image via screenshot
