The lies he tells us

Trump told us this campaign against immigrants was for our safety.

Trump told us that the United States under Biden was a country awash in “bloodshed, chaos, and violent crime”. That immigrants were taking people’s jobs, driving up the cost of housing, and stealing public benefits. He hollered about jails in other countries being emptied to infiltrate the United States with “criminal illegal aliens” and that sanctuary cities were filled with crime because of their policies towards immigrants.

Trump told us all these things. Stephen Miller and Tom Homan continue to tell us all these things, literally screaming them on Sunday morning news shows and at memorial services, or while hollering their threats at the mayors and public figures who dare stand in their way. They are all lies. But not just lies — they are projections of their own evil deeds. Confessions masquerading as accusations.

Much has been written about Trump’s lies on violent crime and his weaponization of those lies to justify anti-democratic takeovers of our cities. It has been well documented that violent crime decreased during the Biden years, while the Biden-Harris administration made historic investments in violence prevention programs — investments that Trump has decimated in the months since he took office. And while Trump has gutted the funding of the very programs that stop bloodshed, prevent chaos, and disrupt cycles of violent crime, he has fashioned himself into a root cause of every other societal ill he has pinned on immigrant communities.

Immigrants taking your jobs? Massive Trump-fueled federal layoffs have resulted in tens of thousands of people losing their jobs. Jobs are being lost in tariff-exposed industries and the same article I just linked describes manufacturing as “paralyzed”. Immigrants driving up the cost of housing? Proposed cuts to a variety of program like housing vouchers and rental assistance are causing housing advocates to worry about the worsening of the housing affordability crisis. And those cuts, not immigrants, are literally taking housing away from those in need. Now let’s talk about stealing public benefits. The big awful bill absolutely guts (steals) benefits like Medicaid, which will have devastating impact on the health and emotional well being of those most impacted by the very violence Trump rails about — and you will pardon me if I cite myself on this point.

The claim of jails being emptied to send criminals to this country is coming from a man who pardoned a whole bunch of insurrectionists, letting them out of jail and back into our communities. Many of whom not just committed crimes against this country, but also had criminal records filled with charges such as rape and domestic violence. An additional irony given that such charges are so often used to assign criminality to entire communities of immigrants. And no, sanctuary policies do not increase crime. In fact, one of Homan’s favorite cities to rail against — my personal center of the universe, Boston — has seen historic reductions in violent crime while maintaining the very immigrant friendly policies that drive Homan out of his head and into apoplectic shouting.

All lies.

And now, in this very moment in time, I am thinking of Trump’s statement that recent immigrants constitute “the largest invasion in the history of our country”. I think of his words as he sends federal agents to invade yet another American city while those city and state leaders tell him absolutely not to. How Trump said that “under Border Czar Harris, our communities are being ravaged by migrant crime” as my eyes take in videos of Border Czar Homan’s federal agents ravaging immigrants and the protestors who try to protect them. Agents who are breaking car windows, tackling protestors, shooting rubber bullets, lobbing tear gas, injuring elders, and throwing women to the ground as their spouses are abducted. Agents who are assaulting immigrants as they enter courthouses and federal offices desperately trying to establish their status in the United States and do so in the “right way”. Agents who are committing assault and battery against the very U.S. citizens Trump claimed he would be keeping safe with his campaign against immigrants.

The Trump administration is perpetrating an unfathomable amount of violence against immigrants. And let’s not lose sight of the fact that he is also perpetrating violence against U.S. citizens in his efforts to terrorize immigrants — in spite of the fact he told us he needed to do this to keep us safe from immigrant violence.

You know what abusers do? They hurt you and then tell you that it for your own good. That it was your fault.

And just like an abuser, all of those messages are lies.

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For this post, I relied heavily on a piece from the Marshall Project that fact checked over 12,000 quotes from Donald Trump on immigration. The piece notes research on how the more someone hears a message the more likely they are to believe it, even when those messages are abject lies. Trump has flooded this country with lies. Lies that helped him win an election, and lies that continue to fuel the violence he himself is perpetrating against the American people.

So where does this leave us? It means that we are the ones who have to tell the truth.

As I approach Yom Kippur and think of the year that has passed and the one ahead, I recommit myself to the work of peace. And peace will never come unless we tell the truth about what actually makes people safer and communities stronger. We have to flood this country with real data that tells the real story of what safety looks like. We have to fill our social media feeds and opinion pages and dinner tables — and substack! — with facts about what does keep us safe. We have to push back on the lies with a vision of the world we want to create built on a foundation of facts.

Flood the country not with shock and awe but with community and care. Not with accusations but with invitations. And not with lies, but with information and data that paves a path to safety for every resident of this country. That affirms a right to safety that is not predicated on the documents people possess, but simply because every person should feel safe in this world. And in this country.

Their humanity depends on it, and ours does too.