Why Immigration Is Central to the 2024 Presidential Election

Frederica Freyberg:
It’s clear immigration is the hot button issue for Republicans, as Donald Trump has proposed increasingly drastic plans to deport undocumented migrants. Kamala Harris has proposed reviving a bipartisan border bill, which would add more immigration officers and judges. The question is which plan are voters drawn to? “Here & Now” reporter Nathan Denzin has more.

Announcer:
Please rise for our national anthem.

Nathan Denzin:
Republicans are ramping up attacks on Democratic immigration policies as Election Day draws closer.

Donald Trump:
If you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country. Anybody would know this.

Nathan Denzin:
Over 8.5 million people have been encountered at the southern border since 2021, about 6 million more than during the Trump administration. Republicans say those immigrants are taking jobs, committing crime and bringing illicit drugs into the country. A point Trump underscored at a campaign stop in Prairie du Chien.

Donald Trump:
They make our criminals look like babies. These are stone cold killers. They’ll walk into your kitchen, they’ll cut your throat. These people are animals. Now they’ll say, “Oh, that’s a terrible thing for him to say.” No, no, these people are animals.

Christine Sinicki:
That rhetoric is dangerous not only to people at the border, but to immigrants that are already here.

Nathan Denzin:
Representative Chris Sinicki represents South Milwaukee in the state Assembly and is also the party chair for the Milwaukee County Democrats.

Christine Sinicki:
When I watch the news and I see these families, these mothers with their children walking hundreds of miles to get to the border, they’re doing it for a reason.

Benjamin Marquez:
The lives of people in many countries, like Venezuela, Nicaragua, their lives have become almost intolerable.

Nathan Denzin:
Benjamin Marquez is a political scientist at UW-Madison with a focus on immigration and Latino populations.

Benjamin Marquez:
The native-born population has always reacted very negatively to large numbers of immigrants coming to the United States.

Christine Sinicki:
I mean it’s gotten to the point now where you’re walking down the street and you see people say, “Oh, you know, he’s got brown skin. I don’t trust this man.”

Benjamin Marquez:
Well, they tend to be people of color. The threat is seen as more intense, as more consequential for the fate of the nation.

Nathan Denzin:
That became particularly clear when Donald Trump falsely claimed Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, during the presidential debate.

Donald Trump:
They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.

Benjamin Marquez:
Even though these accusations have no basis in fact, it flies politically.

Hilario Deleon:
I don’t think it’s racist to hear directly from American citizens about the concerns that they might have, not whether it’s true or not.

Nathan Denzin:
Hilario Deleon is the party chair for the Milwaukee County Republicans. He says concerns over immigration come up frequently when he is out in the community.

Hilario Deleon:
This isn’t something that people are just making up or they’re just, you know what? I’m just going to roll out of bed and I’m going to just go out there and just blast this entire group of people that are coming in.

Nathan Denzin:
Polls have shown that Republicans are likely to be much more concerned about immigration than Democrats. Deleon says he’s heard concerns in Milwaukee that undocumented people are receiving help before local neighborhoods.

Hilario Deleon:
These are people who live in these neighborhoods that feel like that they’re being forgotten. They feel like that their voices aren’t being heard and they’re being pushed aside.

Nathan Denzin:
He says concerns include illegal drugs like fentanyl coming in through the southern border and undocumented people committing crime. But data has shown that most smuggled drugs, including fentanyl, are brought by American citizens through official ports of entry in their vehicles versus by migrants crossing the border. Undocumented migrants are also much less likely to commit crime or end up in jail than natural U.S. citizens.

Christine Sinicki:
They are not going to go out and commit serious crimes because they are hoping to become legal citizens. If they commit these serious crimes, they cannot become a citizen of the United States.

Hilario Deleon:
We’re already dealing with enough crime as it is with the general population — general citizen population here. Why would we want to add more crime onto that problem already?

Nathan Denzin:
The Trump plan, if elected, hinges on a policy of mass deportation for the roughly 11 million undocumented migrants in America.

Donald Trump:
The largest deportation operation in the history of our country because we have no choice.

Benjamin Marquez:
I don’t think many people have given serious thought to what it would take to deport 11 million people.

Nathan Denzin:
And if they were all deported, Marquez says industries around the country would be hurt.

Benjamin Marquez:
I mean, who’s going to process meat in this country? Who’s going to work the dairy farms?

Nathan Denzin:
Studies have found that immigrants often make up more than three quarters of labor on dairy farms.

Christine Sinicki:
The jobs they are taking are the jobs that most people don’t want to do. They’re working in the fields. They’re working in the kitchen. They’re cleaning, you know, cleaning up manure.

Hilario Deleon:
There’s all these American citizens here that could use a job.

Davorin Odrcic:
I couldn’t work on a dairy farm. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t last a couple days.

Nathan Denzin:
Davorin Odrcic is an immigration attorney who works on asylum cases. He says Republican rhetoric has been an issue for some time.

Davorin Odrcic:
I’m seeing on one side this intense hate. I don’t know how else to put it.

Nathan Denzin:
But he also says he hasn’t seen much action taken by Democrats.

Davorin Odrcic:
They see things more through electoral lens of we need to get people excited.

Nathan Denzin:
Davorin Odrcic pointed to a new Biden administration rule that would allow noncitizen spouses and children to stay in America. That policy was implemented in late August.

Davorin Odrcic:
My question is to Democrats is, “Why did you enact this in the summer of an election year? Why wasn’t this enacted within the first week of your administration?”

Nathan Denzin:
He says there’s a fundamental misunderstanding about how our border and asylum process work, which leads to unproductive political debates.

Davorin Odrcic:
I don’t think that folks truly realize that that how difficult it is to be granted asylum.

Nathan Denzin:
In order to be granted asylum, you have to prove to a judge your situation fits a very narrow definition of why you can’t go back to your home country. In the interim, federal law allows asylum seekers a temporary status to remain in the U.S. But even scheduling an appointment with a judge takes years.

Davorin Odrcic:
Earlier this week, I was at the Chicago asylum office for an interview. That application was filed in April of 2016, so eight and a half years.

Nathan Denzin:
In January, a bipartisan border bill proposed adding 4,300 asylum officers and 100 immigration judges to ease waits. But Trump came out in opposition to the bill and it was never passed into law.

Donald Trump:
But I would have never voted for that bill. It was so bad.

Davorin Odrcic:
The problem is that you’re looking at the numbers versus the resources that aren’t keeping up with the demand.

Nathan Denzin:
On her campaign website, Vice President Kamala Harris says she would bring back this bill if elected. She also recently signaled support for keeping even tougher asylum laws enacted by President Biden in June. Since then, encounters have decreased by about 55%.

Benjamin Marquez:
Democrats cannot afford to be branded as advocating an open border. Just come on in and you’re and you’re and you’re home free.

Nathan Denzin:
Only time will tell which plan voters prefer and if the winner will actually improve conditions at the border. For “Here & Now,” I’m Nathan Denzin in Milwaukee.