To the Point provides insights from AU faculty experts on timely questions covering current events, politics, business, culture, science, health, sports, and more. Each week we ask one professor just one critical question about what’s on our minds.

 

On September 10 at the Kamala Harris-Donald Trump presidential debate, immigration became a hot topic. Trump spent much of the debate talking about the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policies. In doing so, he was accused of peddling false information, including the now notorious (and debunked) stories about Haitian immigrants eating pet cats and dogs.  

Curious about the consequences about misinformation like this, we turned to Sociology Professor Ernesto Castañeda, Founding Director of the Immigration Lab and Director of AU’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies. Castañeda conducts research on migration, urban issues, health disparities, marginalized populations, and social movements. Most recently, he co-authored Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions (Columbia University Press 2024).

We asked Professor Castañeda the question on our minds this week:

What are the consequences of Trump's rhetoric, both politically and for migrants in the United States?

The Kamala Harris-Donald Trump debate on September 10 became an example of how Trump has tied his candidacy and policy agenda to anti-immigration and excluding people of color.  

Out of 38 times when Trump spoke for more than two sentences, he mentioned immigration 10 times (26% of the time), while Harris did so in 4 out of 27 turns. Trump brought up immigrants in 7 of the 15 main debate themes and in his closing remarks. For example, in his very first answer, Trump falsely blamed immigrants for taking jobs from other groups and mentioned Springfield, Ohio, and Aurora, Colorado, in reference to other false anti-immigrant stories. He did not go into details, but his right-winger followers knew what he was talking about—an example of a political dog whistle (the use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition).

Later, Harris made fun of Trump for referring to “fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter” during his rallies. She painted this as nonsense, but what many don’t know is that Trump refers to Hannibal Lecter because of a story saying that the character is partly based on a 1959 murder by a Mexican doctor. Therefore, the mentions of Lecter and cannibalism are another anti-immigrant dog whistle that equates immigrants with criminals and dehumanizes people of color. Sadly, by fact-checking these remarks, we circulate them further. 

Answering Harris’s taunts about his rallies, Trump changed the subject and said, “What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country.” He then spelled out the hearsay about Haitian immigrants eating cats in Springfield, Ohio, and added dogs and pets for good measure. The focus of the discussion around the debate became this phrase rather than Trump losing the debate, according to the majority of those who watched. His strategy is to divide and distract. 

Except that it may not work this time. Trump is no longer the outsider to politics, he is no longer entertaining or credible as a creative disruptor, his rallies have become long, boring, and self-referential, all that is left is his xenophobia, and I argue based on previous analyses of anti-immigrant campaigns that this will not be enough for him to get elected again. 

Nonetheless, as a result of Trump and Vance repeating these immigrant falsehoods, there have been bomb threats at schools, hospitals, and colleges, intimidating parading in the streets by Proud Boy groups, racist messages, and a community left humiliated and afraid. The silver lining seems to be that anyone with any sense of decency has been deeply appalled by these claims and is openly rejecting them. This may be a moment similar in public discourse to the 2018 denunciation of the separation of families by Trump's zero tolerance to immigration policies. That made it easier for Democrats to denounce those policies and talk more favorably about immigrants in the 2018 and subsequent campaigns. 

When asked about January 6, Trump again shifted topics and brought up immigrants coming from "all over the world." Though Trump says his main priority is closing the border, and he challenged Biden and Harris to do so that same day, he did not answer why he opposed the bipartisan border senate bill that included many of his policy priorities.

A question from a moderator implied that immigration policies and statements were a liability for Harris. Harris did avoid the topic for most of the debate. It seems to me that Harris was letting Trump implicate himself with his extreme anti-immigrant sentiments, while Harris spoke to everyone “regardless of people's color or the language their grandmother speaks.” Harris also seemed to acknowledge that a debate or a media interview does not provide enough time for nuance to educate the doubters about the benefits of immigration or that immigrants commit less crime, increase innovation, and grow the economy. That work is up to us, and in fact, that is why I wrote my most recent book, Immigration Realities, with Carina Cione, to clarify common misperceptions about immigrants.