Undocumented Immigrants Are Not Rapists and Murderers
Trump is politicizing Mollie Tibbetts' horrible murder to peddle false stereotypes
Politicizing tragedies to evade facts and take away the liberties of ordinary Americans has become a disturbing ritual in America today. Both sides do it. Anti-gun liberals do it to truncate gun rights after every shooting. And anti-immigration conservatives do it after every violent episode involving an immigrant.
So it was a foregone conclusion that restrictionists would pounce on the murder of Mollie Tibbetts by an undocumented farmworker to justify Donald Trump's draconian interior enforcement and border policies—and ask for more! Still, the speed and crassness with which they did so was shocking. Trump himself, who never misses an opportunity to depict the undocumented as "rapists and murderers," led the way by insisting via Twitter that only electing more Republicans in sync with his anti-immigration agenda will make Americans safe from such murders.
Usually, vile stereotypes have at least a grain of truth in them. But the stereotype of the undocumented as "rapists and murderers" is the opposite of the truth, I note in my column at The Week. Literally every study shows that they commit fewer violent crimes and lower crime rates where they live.
Go here to read the piece.
