April 2, 2018

Trump Takes His Anti-Immigrant Tweets to a New Level

In a series of misleading and factually incorrect messages, the president claimed that “our country is being stolen.”

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

President Donald Trump is doubling down on his Easter Twitter attack on Central Americans seeking asylum in the United States. In a series of tweets on Monday morning, Trump said Mexico must stop caravans of Central Americans fleeing persecution and claimed that “our country is being stolen.”

Trump tweeted similar claims on Sunday after Fox News reported on a caravan of more than 1,000 Central Americans heading through Mexico to claim asylum in the United States. US and international law protect asylum-seekers’ right to apply for protections from persecution. The Trump administration has unsuccessfully pushed Congress to weaken those protections by making it easier to detain asylum-seekers and quickly reject their claims. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on a House immigration subcommittee, has said the reforms favored by the Trump administration would “all but destroy the US asylum system.” 

Trump is claiming that the caravan members are coming to the United States to obtain work permits under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the Obama-era program that protects nearly 700,000 Dreamers who came to the country as children. But that’s not possible. New DACA applications are not being accepted. Even if they were, the caravan members’ application would not be approved. To qualify for DACA, a person has to have lived in the United States since June 2007.

Adolfo Flores, a BuzzFeed reporter who is traveling with the caravan, wrote on Twitter that he has not heard people mention DACA. In September, Trump moved to end DACA, but two court decisions have forced the administration to continue accepting renewal applications.

Trump also falsely claimed that Democrats want “no borders” and don’t care about the DACA-eligible immigrants known as Dreamers. In February, Democrats overwhelmingly voted to fund Trump’s border wall in exchange for providing a path to citizenship for Dreamers. The deal fell apart when Trump insisted the deal include severe cuts to legal immigration.

Trump is now calling on Congress to invoke the “nuclear option,” which would allow the Senate to pass immigration legislation with 50 votes, instead of the 60 votes that are needed today. The hardline immigration bill favored by the White House would eventually reduce legal immigration by 38 percent, according to the libertarian Cato Institute. In February, moderate Republican senators voted against a similar bill that cuts legal immigration by targeting family-based migration, which Trump derides as “chain migration.” 

On Sunday, Mexico’s foreign secretary, Luis Videgaray Caso, appeared to push back against Trump. Videgaray pointed out that Mexico and the United States already work closely on migration issues. “An inaccurate news report should not serve to question this strong cooperation,” he wrote on Twitter, apparently referring to the Fox News story. 

“Upholding human dignity and rights is not at odds with the rule of law,” Videgaray stated before adding, “Happy Easter.”

 

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate