The Big Lie About Immigrants You Heard at the RNC This Week

It’s election season, so Republicans are lying about immigrants again.
Over and over at this week’s Republican National Convention, politicians who know better — or who ought to — falsely said or implied that undocumented migrants and asylum seekers pose an unthinkable criminal threat to innocent, native-born Americans.

The reality is the opposite: According to available data, American citizens who were born here are vastly more homicidal than immigrants, including undocumented immigrants. And the vast majority of drugs recovered at the southern border arrive here in the vehicles of American citizens.

But you wouldn’t know that, listening to Republicans.

Donald Trump, accepting the Republican nomination Thursday, spoke ominously of an “invasion” of immigrants that had spread “misery, crime, poverty, disease and destruction to communities all across our land.” America, he said, has become a “dumping ground” for the world’s violent criminals. He promised the “largest deportation operation” in American history, pledging to Republicans: “I will not let these killers and criminals into our country.”

The night prior, as the RNC attendees held up signs calling for “Mass Deportations Now!” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — who has deployed thousands of Texas troops in a yearslong, multibillion-dollar effort to turn the border into a militarized zone — growled: “Biden has welcomed into our country rapists, murderers, even terrorists! And the price that we have paid has been deadly.”
The facts simply don’t support these incendiary claims.

Texas Data Shows The Truth About ‘Migrant Crime’

Case-by-case data on crime rates among native-born American citizens, undocumented people and immigrants with some form of documentation can be