With one simple question on Thursday, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes – who has been on this story long before the outrage began – obliterated Donald Trump’s myth that if his so-called “zero tolerance” immigration policy is overturned, the country will be “overrun” with undocumented immigrants.
As the ‘All In’ host pointed out, though, the Trump administration’s cruel policy is barely a month old. Prior to its cruel implementation, the United States was not “overrun” with immigrants.
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Trump’s reasoning behind his so-called ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy makes no sense. #ctl #p2 #inners #immigration #MSNBC pic.twitter.com/eSXt5k3B93
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— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) June 22, 2018
Earlier in the day, Trump stumbled through his reasoning for why a zero tolerance policy on the southern border is imperative: “If we took zero tolerance away, you would be overrun as a — you would have millions of people pouring through our border. If you took zero tolerance away, everybody would come right now, there would be getting their little belongings, unfortunately, and they would be heading up. You would be — you would have a run on this country the likes of which nobody’s ever seen.”
Chris Hayes immediately shattered this nonsense: “Just to be clear. I just want people to understand this. The zero tolerance policy was started six weeks ago. Okay? So you got to ask yourself, was the country being overrun seven weeks ago? Or eight weeks ago? Is the president telling the truth what’s going on?”
Trump’s zero tolerance policy is a massive con job
To answer Chris Hayes’ questions: No, the United States wasn’t being overrun by undocumented immigrants before Trump enacted his inhumane immigration policy.
And, no, the president isn’t telling the truth about what’s going on at the southern border because he can’t afford to. After all, in the unlikely event that his supporters accidentally stumble across a reality-based assessment of the southern border, they’d realize the United States doesn’t have an undocumented immigration problem.
As the Democratic challenger to Ted Cruz, Beto O’Rourke pointed out on Thursday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) even admits that family units coming across the southern border is down this year over last.
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.@BetoORourke uses facts to prove that the only immigration crisis along the southern border is the one caused by the Trump administration. #inners #ctl #p2 #immigration pic.twitter.com/t9e3EZ4E1R
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) June 22, 2018
In other words, the only crisis at the southern border is the one created by Donald Trump himself, not by the families escaping violence from their home countries.
This is just the latest and most cruel way the president has used minority and immigrant resent to keep his base how he likes them: ignorant, fearful and seething with baseless anger.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
