What to do about illegal immigrants coming over the United States southern border has been a major topic of discussion during this presidential campaign season. No doubt our current immigration laws and the enforcement of those laws are not working and changes need to be made. But when a policy message on immigration is conveyed utilizing false facts targeting a specific minority group, great evil can result.
This scenario is currently being played out as a result of former President Donald Trump prominently endorsing the idea of “illegal” Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio at the recent presidential debate. At the time I thought Trump has fallen into a debating trap laid by Vice President Harris. But upon reconsideration, I now suspect that Trump felt he could use this whopper of a tale as an immigration policy parable—a story with the core message that illegal immigrants are taking something away from us that is important in our lives, in this case our pets, and therefore they must be sent back to where they came from.
Never mind that the Haitian community in Springfield are not illegal immigrants (they have temporary legal status) and are not harming pets. This is not important to the messenger. What is important is how the parable confirms what many voters want to hear about illegal immigration. Such a phenomenon is referred to as “confirmation bias”—the tendency of people “to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with their existing beliefs.”
To get his core immigration message out to voters, Trump has already expanded his attacks to include Haitians that reside in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, a town 21 miles south of Pittsburgh. Even though he does not claim that this Haitian community eats pets, he does falsely claim that they are illegal immigrants and that they are destroying the borough with “lawless gangs.”
Trump’s false accusations against Haitians are analogous to European Jews being falsely accused of using the blood of Christian children to bake matzahs (unleavened bread) for Passover. Because hatred of the Jews was rampant during the Middle Ages and even into modern times, it was not hard to get the masses into believing that the Jews had committed what is referred to as “blood libel.” Thus, confirmation bias was easily established. Tragically, those accusations often led to non-Jewish mobs, supported by government authorities, violently attacking their Jewish neighbors.
How this will end for the targeted Haitians is still not clear. We can only hope that one or more Haitian communities do not suffer the same fate as numerous Jewish communities did in years past. Of course, much depends on who is elected President in November. If Harris is elected President, the story will most likely end there. Still, up until Inauguration Day, Haitian refugees will most likely live in daily fear of being attacked by those who are inspired by Trump’s immigration policy parable. On the other hand, if Trump is elected, all bets are off. Besides the refugees enduring the continued fear of attack that will go on well beyond Inauguration Day, it is quite likely that Trump will focus on rounding-up Haitian refugees with legal temporary status and sending them back to Haiti. This is something that the former President has said he will do.
Some legal experts doubt that a Trump Administration could easily deport immigrants who are here legally. However, given the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity in Trump v. United States, which has resulted in the U.S. Constitution now being understood to provide the president with a high degree of protection from prosecution for bad acts committed while in office, it is quite possible that Trump would simply ignore any legal obstacles put in his way. This would not only be a tragedy for the Haitians whose time in the United States will be abruptly cut short but also serve as a major distraction from the real policy debate that needs to take place—how to minimize illegal immigration from coming over our southern border.