Trump described an imaginary "invasion" at the border 2 dozen times in the past year
A man drove more than 10 hours to a Walmart in the Texas border city of El Paso Saturday, reportedly intending to kill Latinx people and immigrants. Minutes before he shot 22 people, a racist, xenophobic manifesto appeared on the 8chan online forum, warning readers of a “Hispanic invasion” of Texas. Federal officials believe the shooter wrote it.
The language used to describe Mexican Americans and Latinx immigrants was shocking — not just because of the hatred and racism it revealed, but because it was similar to the language repeated by the president of the United States.
Lawmakers and critics have pointed out that the shooter may have been imitating Trump’s rhetoric about an “invasion” of “people” and “illegal immigrants.” During a recent campaign rally in the Florida panhandle, for example, Trump used the word “invasion” seven times in less than a minute.
However, when the president uses “invasion” to describe migration, he is evoking a violent, foreign military conquest — nothing close to reality. What Trump calls an invasion is in fact a humanitarian crisis.
While it’s true that there’s been a recent surge in the number of Central American migrants heading to the US, the vast majority are families, and they are turning themselves in to Border Patrol officers to request asylum. Voluntarily turning oneself in to authorities is hardly an invasion by any meaning of the word. But repeating the false “invasion” narrative plays to the fears of white supremacists. The El Paso shooter, like some others who have committed mass murder, seemed to believe that brown immigrants are taking away the power of the white American majority.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-described-an-imaginary-“invasion”-at-the-border-2-dozen-times-in-the-past-year/ar-AAFtTPA?li=BBnb7Kz