Trump, DeSantis, other Republicans deceiving you with false claims about undocumented migrants | Opinion

In their quest for a political cause with which to win the 2024 election, former President Donald Trump and fellow Republican hopefuls are trying to convince you that the United States is being invaded by Mexicans migrants who are bringing deadly fentanyl into the country.

But they are grossly distorting official data and spreading a fake narrative. What they are not telling you is that most of the migrants who cross the border without papers are not Mexicans, but Venezuelans and Central Americans, and that undocumented migrants have almost zero responsibility for the fentanyl smuggling crisis.

In fact, most of the fentanyl entering the United States is brought into the country through legal ports of entry, including airports. More important, most of it is smuggled by U.S. citizens.

Unlawful arrivals across the southern border are once again in the news, because they went up 30% in July and August, after declining slightly in May and June.

But Trump and other Republicans are blowing the migrant influx out of proportion and escalating their Mexico-bashing narrative, feeding into the xenophobic sentiments of much of their base.

Trump said at a recent campaign rally that, “I’ll make clear that we must use any and all resources needed to stop the invasion, including moving thousands of troops currently stationed overseas.”

At the second Republican debate last week, which Trump chose to not attend, the Republican candidates tried to outdo one another on who would take the hardest line against Mexico. Some of them, such as Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, called for U.S. military intervention in Mexico to combat the drug cartels that produce fentanyl.

But according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, the majority of migrants who cross the border without proper immigration papers are not Mexicans. Mexicans account for the single largest group of migrants, but are a minority.

“If you consider all irregular arrivals in the southwest U.S. border this fiscal year, Mexicans account for only 30%,” Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, a policy analyst with the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute research group, told me. “The rest are mainly Venezuelans, Hondurans and Guatemalans.”

In August, the last month for which official figures are available, there were 51,913 arrivals of undocumented migrants through U.S.-Mexico border crossings, of which only 15,990 were Mexicans. The rest were Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans, Central Americans, Africans and Asians, according to CBP data.

What is an even greater distortion of the facts is the Republicans’ claim that undocumented migrants are to blame for the fentanyl crisis. More than 73,000 Americans died from fentanyl overdoses in 2022, more than twice the amount of deaths from that drug in 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control. and Prevention.

The Republicans are simply lying when they link illegal migration with fentanyl trafficking: According to U.S. government data, 86.2% of felons sentenced for fentanyl trafficking are U.S. citizens.

Even more telling, a Cato Institute study found that only 0.02% of people intercepted while trying to cross the border illegally were found to possess fentanyl.

There is an explanation for this: Undocumented migrants crossing the border know that they face a serious chance of being stopped and searched by U.S. border guards. That’s why most fentanyl traffickers are U.S. citizens who enter the country through legal border crossings and airports, where chances of being searched are much smaller.

And yet, despite these well-known official statistics, an NPR‐Ipsos poll showed that 60% of Republicans believe that most of the fentanyl entering the country is smuggled by undocumented migrants.

Instead of invading Mexico or sending troops to the border, as Republican hopefuls are calling for, Washington should step up detection measures to find illicit drugs at legal border crossings and airports. And, of course, it also should increase education, prevention and treatment to reduce U.S. drug addiction, because as long as there is a big demand there will always be a supply.

Next time Republican hopefuls, as well as Fox News and other right-wing propaganda outlets, threaten to invade Mexico and claim that undocumented migrants are flooding the United States with fentanyl, tell them to stop spreading fake narratives. They are deceiving you to score political points and increase their poll ratings, while doing nothing to solve the real problems.

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