Trump plays on migrant fears
With midterm elections soon, President Donald Trump has upped his anti-immigrant rhetoric. His goal is to stop immigrants and the US Democrats, writes Foreign Editor DAVID PRATT
MANY
by now are exhausted. The long trek aside, searing temperatures and lack of food having taken their toll. Over the last few days they passed through the town of Mapastepec in the southeastern state of Chiapas in Mexico.
Though some 1,000 miles still stand between them and the US border, the political controversy and fallout from what has become known as the migrant caravan gains momentum every day both inside the United States and back in Honduras from where it originated.
It was earlier this month that the poster notice began circulating on social media in Honduras showing a lone migrant sketched against a bright red backdrop.
“The violence and poverty is expelling us,” read the slogan accompanying the poster.
The work of activists who had helped lead migrants north in the past, it was also an effort to undermine newly re-elected President Juan Orlando Hernandez and call attention to the plight of migrants.
On October 12, in the crime-ridden Honduran city of San Pedro Sula, a group of 160 people gathered at a bus terminal and prepared to set off on the dangerous journey. Little did they know then that within weeks their numbers would have swollen to over 7,000 as they journeyed through neighbouring Guatemala and then across Mexico.
What had begun as a domestic political dispute in Honduras has since mushroomed into an international political football set to bounce on the upcoming US mid term elections.
As one might expect, US President Donald Trump has pulled out all the stops to use the caravan to stoke fears about foreigners as the poll approaches on November 6.
Mr Trump, who has been stumping for congressional Republicans, has already dubbed the poll the “election of the caravan,” and says that the Democrats support the “illegal immigration onslaught” because they “figure everybody coming in is going to vote Democrat”.
As the caravan snakes its way up through Central America toward the US border, Mr Trump has hit his favourite cable news TV shows and been tweeting non-stop hoping his strategy will pay off in the final two weeks before election day.
For the Republicans too, the caravan has been a timely and welcome distraction away from the embarrassing cosying up by the US to Saudi Arabia following the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey.
Immigration has long been a topic that gains traction with Mr Trump’s political base.
An October poll by the Pew Research Centre found 75 % of Republican voters considered illegal immigration a “very big” problem. By comparison, only 19 % of Democrats felt the same way. The overall percentage of voters who labelled immigration a major issue tallied closely with the level in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election, says Pew data.
Certainly in at least several midterm election campaigns including Texas, Arizona and California, immigration is a central issue as it has been lately.
“Every time you see a caravan,” he tweeted earlier this week,“or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms!”
On Monday, Mr Trump further unleashed an explosion of immigrationfocused social media statements, and warned that he may deploy the military to the border while threatening to cut off aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The president has even gone as far as to suggest that “unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in,” with the caravan even though no evidence has been provided over such a claim.
“I have alerted Border patrol and military that this is a National Emergency,” Mr Trump said.
Many US observers point to the fact that the caravan issue could not have arrived at a more opportune time for the Trump Administration and played right into the president’s hand.
“The President is doing what he does best, seizing national attention with a flood of outrageous and improbable lies that drown out rivals, leverage his brawling personality and rip at fault lines of race, identity and patriotism,” observed CNN White House reporter Stephen Collinson.
“Above all, Trump is hardening his line on immigration, the explosive issue that is usually a winner for him.”
A flood of outrageous and improbable lies