Day 1,027: Trump’s racist DACA lies are back with a vengeance
Donald Trump’s not-so-subtle vilification of people of color has been abhorrent for years. For decades, he has done everything from slandering innocent black teenagers to trying to keep minorities out of his buildings. More recently, he has claimed that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., said a judge of Mexican heritage couldn’t be impartial and alleged a litany of other horrific and false things.
In short, Trump has never hid his racism.
And it’s back, yet again.
With the Supreme Court considering letting Trump end the DACA program that Obama authorized, Trump had his racial comments — full of lies — ready to go.
First, “hardened criminals” aren’t eligible to be part of the DACA program, which he, in theory, should know. To qualify for the program, individuals can’t have been convicted of a felony, serious misdemeanor or three of any misdemeanors. They also can’t pose a threat to public safety or national security.
On top of that, Obama never claimed that he had “no legal right to sign [the executive] order,” no matter how many times Trump repeats the lie.
Pesky things like facts didn’t stop Trump from doubling down.
Perhaps most importantly, arrests aren’t convictions. Those arrested are afforded a presumption of innocence under the Constitution, no matter what conclusions Trump is drawing. Arrests are a particularly bad metric to use considering the data showing minorities are arrested at a far higher rate than their peers for the same behavior.
On top of that, even if Trump’s 53,792 figure is accurate, that’s not a “very large proportion of the total” number of recipients. As of 2017, there were about 700,000 DACA recipients in the U.S. according to the government’s own website. Trump’s “very large” figure is less than 8% of the number of recipients. For comparison, nearly 78 million Americans, or about one in three adults, has an arrest record.
There’s no evidence that DACA recipients, or other immigrants, are responsible for more violent crime or other crime than other U.S. residents. In fact, that numbers — at least the ones Trump wants to cherry-pick — seem to show the opposite with even a minute amount of digging.
Trump is a racist who likes espousing racist thoughts. For him, it’s all about fearmongering and driving a narrative to disparage groups of non-white people, no matter the actual facts.
1,027 days in, 435 to go
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