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      Republicans unveil impeachment articles against head of homeland security

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      Republicans published two articles of impeachment against homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday, and plan to formally advance them on Tuesday towards a full House vote, despite two hearings failing to produce any evidence of his wrongdoing.The politically charged move comes amid a raging battle in Washington DC over immigration, with a senior Democrat announcing Sunday that senators had reached a bipartisan agreement to tighten border security, even as Donald Trump took credit for likely sinking it.The impeachment charges against Mayorkas allege, first, that he ignored laws passed by Congress and court orders, in order to pursue policies that led to a surge in illegal immigration; and second, that he breached the public trust by making false statements and obstructing oversight of the homeland security department.“Congress has a duty to see that the executive branch implements and enforces the laws we have passed. Yet Secretary Mayorkas has repeatedly refused to do so,” Tennessee Republican congressman Mark Green, chair of the House homeland security committee, said in a statement.A homeland security official responded by calling the charges “a sham” and a distraction from “other vital national security priorities”.“This markup is just more of the same political games from House homeland security committee Republicans,” the official said in a statement.“They don’t want to fix the problem; they want to campaign on it. That’s why they have undermined efforts to achieve bipartisan solutions and ignored the facts, legal scholars and experts, and even the Constitution itself in their quest to baselessly impeach Secretary Mayorkas.”Many Republicans have privately questioned the push to impeach Mayorkas, who would almost certainly be acquitted by the Democratic majority in the Senate, fearing it could negatively impact members of Congress running for re-election in marginal districts.No evidence was produced during two public House committee meetings to support Republicans’ allegations of “high crimes and misdemeanors”, while constitutional scholars have said the rare move to try to impeach a cabinet secretary for policy decisions was illegitimate.“If the members of the committee disapprove of the Biden administration’s immigration and border policies, the constitution gives this Congress a wealth of legislative powers to change them. Impeachment is not one of them,” Frank Bowman, a professor at the University of Missouri school of law, testified to the panel this month.Mayorkas has been a key player in the months-long bipartisan negotiations in the Senate for a border deal. Joe Biden’s administration has made concessions to Republican hardliners in an effort to secure their support for US aid for the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.On Friday, the president said he would not just sign the bill, but use the authority it would grant to close the southern border the day he signed it, in order to stem the flow of migrants.“What’s been negotiated would – if passed into law – be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country,” Biden said in a statement.Connecticut Democratic senator Chris Murphy, who led his party’s negotiating team, told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that a bipartisan deal had been reached and could face a vote in the coming days.“We are finalizing last pieces of text right now and this bill could be ready to be on the floor of the Senate next week. But it won’t be if Republicans decide that they want to keep this issue unsettled for political purposes,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I am hopeful that we will still have enough Republicans in the Senate who want to fix the problem at the border rather than just do Donald Trump’s bidding, but we will see over the next 24 to 48 hours.”Murphy was referring to the former president’s attempts to derail the bill as he seeks to lock down the Republican 2024 White House nomination and run an election campaign themed around Democrats’ perceived failure to solve the border crisis.Last week, Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader who has long supported the push for a deal, reportedly told colleagues in a closed-door meeting that the “politics on this have changed”, while Trump took credit for trying to blow up the agreement during a campaign speech in Nevada on Saturday.“A lot of the senators are trying to say, respectfully, they’re blaming it on me. I say, that’s okay. Please blame it on me. Please,” he said.Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker and a staunch Trump ally, has said any deal passed by the Senate would be “dead on arrival” in the House. Johnson is also blamed by Democrats for reigniting the once-stalled push to impeach Mayorkas, after the speaker announced last week that he would make it a priority.In a statement, the Congressional Integrity Project took aim at Johnson and Trump for trying to block the deal while at the same time attempting to impeach Mayorkas for failing to solve the border crisis.“Let us be clear, this bogus impeachment is as wrong as it is immoral and it will blow up in their faces,” the group said in a statement.“And if Republicans from swing districts, and especially districts Biden won in 2020, think they can quietly support this nonsense without repercussions, they are as delusional as Donald Trump.” More

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      Biden vows to ‘shut down the border’ if Senate immigration bill is passed

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      Joe Biden said on Friday that the border deal being negotiated in the US Senate was the “toughest and fairest” set of reforms possible and vowed to “shut down the border” the day he signs the bill.The bipartisan talks have hit a critical point amid mounting Republican opposition. Some Republicans have set a deal on border security as a condition for further Ukraine aid.Earlier in the day, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said the deal is “dead on arrival” in its current form, according to a letter to Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives reviewed by Reuters.Biden, a Democrat seeking another term in the 5 November elections, has grappled with record numbers of migrants caught illegally crossing the US-Mexico border during his presidency. Republicans contend Biden should have kept the restrictive policies of Republican former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for his party’s nomination.“What’s been negotiated would – if passed into law – be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country,” Biden said in a statement.“It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”The White House has agreed to new limits on asylum at the border, including the creation of an expulsion power that would allow migrants who cross the US-Mexico border illegally to be rapidly returned to Mexico if migrant encounters surpass 4,000 per day, three sources familiar with the matter said.If encounters pass 5,000 per day, the use of the expulsion authority would become mandatory, according to the sources who requested anonymity to discuss details of the private negotiations.In December, encounters averaged more than 9,500 per day, according to US government statistics released on Friday.The sweeping authority would be comparable to the Covid-era Title 42 policy put in place under Trump during the pandemic and which ended under Biden in May 2023.Migrants trying to claim asylum would still be able to do so at legal border crossings if the expulsion power was in effect, one of the sources said.The US would be required to allow at least 1,400 migrants per day to approach legal crossings to claim asylum if the expulsions were in effect, the source added.The bill aims to resolve asylum claims in six months without detaining migrants, the source said, faster than the current process, which can take years.Trump, however, took to social media last week to warn against any deal that fails to deliver everything Republicans want to shut down border crossings.Biden also urged Congress on Friday to provide the funding he asked for in October to secure the border.“This includes an additional 1,300 border patrol agents, 375 immigration judges, 1,600 asylum officers, and over 100 cutting-edge inspection machines to help detect and stop fentanyl at our south-west border,” the president said. More

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      Aid to Ukraine and Israel in doubt as House speaker says he won’t support deal

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      The prospects for the US Congress approving new aid to Ukraine as well as military assistance to Israel worsened on Friday after the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said he was unlikely to support a deal under negotiation in the Senate that is considered crucial to unlocking the funds.A bipartisan group of senators have for weeks been looking for an agreement to implement stricter immigration policies and curtail migrant arrivals at the southern border with Mexico, which have surged during Joe Biden’s presidency. Republicans have named passing that legislation as their price for approving aid to Ukraine, whose cause rightwing lawmakers have soured on as the war has dragged on and Donald Trump, who has been ambivalent about sending arms to Kyiv, draws closer to winning the Republican presidential nomination.While the precise details of the immigration bargain have yet to be released, Johnson told his Republican colleagues in a letter that “if rumors about the contents of the draft proposal are true, it would have been dead on arrival in the House anyway”.Underscoring his stridency on the topic, Johnson reiterated his demand that the Democratic-controlled Senate vote on the Secure the Border Act, a hardline proposal that would essentially resurrect Trump’s immigration policy by restarting construction of a wall on the border with Mexico and forcing asylum seekers to wait in that country while their claim is processed.He also announced the chamber would move ahead with its plan to impeach the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, whom Republicans have accused of mishandling border security.“When we return next week, by necessity, the House Homeland Security Committee will move forward with Articles of Impeachment against Secretary Mayorkas. A vote on the floor will be held as soon as possible thereafter,” Johnson wrote.The speaker’s demands cast into further doubt on Congress’s ability to find agreement on reforming the immigration system – which has for decades been one of the most intractable issues in Washington – as well support two countries the Biden administration considers national security priorities. The United States has been the top funder of Kyiv’s defense against the Russian invasion that began in February 2022, and after Hamas’s 7 October terror attack against Israel, Biden argued in an address from the Oval Office that the two country’s causes were linked, and asked Congress to approve aid to both, as well as funds for Taiwan and to further secure the border.Johnson responded by having House Republicans approve a bill that would fund aid to Israel alone and also cut the Internal Revenue Service’s budget, boosting the federal deficit. Democrats, who control the Senate, have rejected both that measure and the Secure the Border Act, leaving the bipartisan immigration reform negotiations as the last avenue remaining to win approval of Ukraine aid.Congresses and presidents since the days of George W Bush have tried and failed to reform the US’s system for admitting workers and immigrants. The long odds of the latest negotiations succeeding were underscored on Wednesday when Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, told his lawmakers that because Trump wanted to campaign on immigration reform, he doubted that the party would support any agreement that emerges from the talks.“We are in a quandary,” McConnell said, according to Punchbowl News. “The politics of this have changed.”Senators from both parties expressed outrage, with Chris Murphy, the main Democratic negotiator in the talks, saying: “I hope we don’t live in a world today in which one person inside the Republican party holds so much power that they could stop a bipartisan bill to try to give the president additional power at the border to make more sense of our immigration policy.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe following day, Politico reported that McConnell changed his tone, telling Republicans in a meeting that he still supported the talks. But the damage may well have been done.The GOP’s control of the House means that Republicans may have the votes to impeach Mayorkas, and, at some point, Biden, whom the party has also opened an inquiry against. But the Senate’s Democratic leaders are almost certain to reject the charges against the homeland security chief, who has used his appearances before Congress to describe the country’s immigration system as “broken” and urge reforms.On Friday, the top Democrat on the homeland security committee sent a letter to its Republican chair, Mark Green, objecting to the charges against Mayorkas, noting that the House hasn’t voted to approve the impeachment and that Green had reportedly promised donors months ago that he’d go after him.“Nothing about this sham impeachment has abided by House precedent, but all of it has been done to reach the predetermined outcome you promised your donors last year,” the committee’s ranking member, Bennie Thompson, wrote. More

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      Mitt Romney: Trump’s call to stonewall Democrats on immigration ‘appalling’

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      Donald Trump’s directive to congressional Republicans to not agree to a deal with Democrats on immigration and border control is “appalling”, Mitt Romney said.“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” Romney, the Republican senator from Utah, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday.“And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame [Joe] Biden for it is … really appalling.”Having won in Iowa and New Hampshire and with only the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley still in the race, Trump is the clear favourite for the Republican presidential nomination to face Biden in November.His progress has not been impeded by 91 criminal charges, attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting the January 6 attack on Congress and assorted civil trials.It was widely reported this week that Trump has sought to dynamite Senate talks for an immigration deal long linked to prospects of a new aid package for Ukraine.Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, reportedly acknowledged that Trump’s opposition makes it highly unlikely immigration talks will succeed, given hardline Republicans’ hold on the House and its speaker, Mike Johnson, a far-right congressman from Louisiana.Romney is a former Massachusetts governor who became the Republican nominee for president in 2012 before winning a Senate seat in Utah in 2018.Though he flirted with working for Trump when he won the White House, Romney has since emerged as a constant opponent.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe sole Republican to vote to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, for seeking political dirt in Ukraine, Romney was one of seven senators to find Trump guilty in his second such trial, for inciting the January 6 insurrection.On Thursday, Romney said: “The reality is that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border, and someone running for president ought to try and get the problem solved, as opposed to saying: ‘Hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’” More

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      US border policy deal within reach despite efforts by Trump to derail it, senators say

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      Congressional negotiators said a border deal was within reach on Thursday, despite efforts by Donald Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill to derail the talks.With the fate of US aid for Ukraine hanging in the balance, the outlook for border compromise had appeared grim following reports on Wednesday night that the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, was walking away from a compromise that he suggested could “undermine” Trump’s chances in a November general election against Joe Biden. But by Thursday afternoon, senators involved in the discussions were insisting that the opposite was true: an agreement was within reach and legislative text could be released in the coming days.Referring to Trump as the “nominee”, McConnell reported told Republicans in a closed-door meeting on Wednesday night that “politics on this have changed”, according to a report in Punchbowl News. With Trump as their likely standard bearer, he suggested that it would be unwise to move forward with a bipartisan immigration bill that could possibly neutralize one of Biden’s biggest vulnerabilities. “We don’t want to do anything to undermine him,” McConnell said, referring to Trump.“That’s like parallel universe shit,” Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina involved in the negotiations, fumed to reporters on Thursday. “That didn’t happen.”It would amount to a surprising about-face for McConnell, a strong supporter of sending aid to Ukraine and no friend of the former president, who has leveled racist broadsides against McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, and mercilessly disparaged the Republican leader as an “old crow”.Walking through the Capitol on Thursday, McConnell told Bloomberg News that the immigration talks were “ongoing”. Later he reportedly assured his confused conference that he was “fully onboard” with the negotiations, and brushed off reports that suggested otherwise.The proposal under discussion in Congress would have changed immigration policy to discourage migration. It would include major concessions from Democrats on immigration in exchange for Republican support on passing military assistance to Israel and Ukraine, a country whose cause the party’s far right has turned against.But the politics of a deal have only become more challenging as Trump consolidates support from Republican officials in what many view as his inevitable march toward the GOP nomination.On social media, Trump implored Mike Johnson, the arch-conservative House speaker, not to accept a deal “unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions and Millions of people”.Failure to strike a deal would have global implications, with the Pentagon warning that Ukrainian soldiers on the frontlines of its grinding war with Russia risk running out of ammunition. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has said the “future of the war in Ukraine” and the “security of our western democracy” depend on Congress reaching an agreement.Biden had requested tens of billions of dollars from Congress to send aid to Ukraine and Israel as well as to allies in the Asia Pacific region. But the funding package has been stalled for months in Congress amid Republican demands for dramatic changes to border policy.View image in fullscreenSenate Republicans who support the border talks said the party should seize the opportunity to address the record rise of people arriving at the US southern border, a situation both parties and the White House have described as a crisis.“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” the Utah senator Mitt Romney, a Republican who has pressed his party to approve military aid for Ukraine, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday. “And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling.”He continued: “The reality is that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border. And someone running for president ought to try and get the problem solved as opposed to saying: ‘Hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEven in less contentious times, immigration remains one of the thorniest issues in American politics, and efforts to reform the nation’s outdated system have failed repeatedly. But as an unprecedented number of people fleeing violence, poverty and natural disasters seek refuge at the US-Mexico border, the issue has become top of mind for many Americans who overwhelmingly disapprove of the Biden administration’s handling of the matter.Trump has already made immigration a central issue of his campaign, outlining a draconian vision for his second term that includes mass raids, detentions camps and more funding to build his long-promised wall along the border with Mexico.Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill have argued that a bipartisan deal would only serve to give Biden political cover without actually solving the problem. Others argue that the Senate plan was designed to force the hand of the Republican-controlled House, where the speaker is under pressure from the far-right flank of his party not to compromise on the issue.At a press conference earlier this week, the Texas senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, denounced the proposal, the details of which have not yet been released, as a “stinking pile of crap” that “represents Senate Republican leadership waging war on House Republicans”.Cruz alleged that the negotiators involved cared only about supporting Ukraine and not fixing the issues at the southern border.If a deal falls apart, Schumer and Biden will be forced to look for alternative legislative paths to approving aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. But with Republicans demanding border security measures in exchange for their votes, it remains far from certain that tying the aid to must-pass spending bills or bringing it to the floor as a standalone measure would garner the necessary 60 votes in the Senate.The world will likely know soon whether a deal is possible, the Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, one of the Democratic negotiators, told reporters on Thursday.“I think the Republican Congress is going to make a decision in the next 24 hours as to whether they actually want to get something done or whether they want to leave the border a mess for political reasons,” he said. More

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      US supreme court allows border patrol to cut razor wire installed by Texas

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      The Biden administration is allowed to cut the razor wire deployed by Texas at the border with Mexico, the US supreme court ruled on Monday.The concertina wire, deployed at the direction of the Republican Texas governor, Greg Abbott, runs roughly 30 miles (48km) along the Rio Grande river, near the border city of Eagle Pass. It is part of Abbott’s broader fight with the Biden administration over immigration enforcement and what he calls “Biden’s reckless open-border policies”.It has also become a symbol of America’s broader political fight over the control of the nation’s border with many Republicans hailing it as tough, but necessary policy, and many Democrats decrying it as inhumane and cruel.Border security and immigration officially fall under the purview of the federal government, as decided in the 2012 supreme court case, Arizona v United States. The court held that federal immigration law preempted Arizona’s immigration laws.In a narrow 5-4 vote, the supreme court has now granted an emergency appeal from the Biden administration.The ruling now means the lone star state must comply with the Biden administration and allow federal authorities access to the border, contrary to recent actions taken by state.Texas officials have argued that federal agents cut the wire to help groups crossing illegally through the river before taking them in for processing. A federal appeals court last month forced federal agents to stop cutting the concertina wire.Texas officials earlier this month refused an order from the Biden administration to allow US border patrol agents access to a part of the US-Mexico border that is now under the state’s control. Last week, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton rejected orders for the state to stop controlling Shelby Park, a public park and entry point into the US.A number of migrants have crossed at Eagle Pass in recent months.“We are not allowing Border Patrol on that property anymore. We’re not going to let this happen anymore,” Abbott said at the time.The refusal to obey federal orders cost lives, the department of homeland security said. The agency reported three migrants, two of whom were two children, drowned near the park federal authorities were restricted from entering.In addition to wire, Abbott has also authorized installing floating barriers in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass and allowed state troopers to arrest and jail thousands of people suspected of migrating illegally on trespassing charges – initiatives taken under Operation Lone Star, a joint effort between the Texas department of public safety and the Texas military department that began in 2021 to curb illegal immigration.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Biden administration is also challenging those actions in federal court.In court papers, the administration said the “fencing further restricts Border Patrol’s ability to reach the river in particular areas”.Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor sided with the administration. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas voted with Texas.No explanations for their vote were provided by any of the justices.
      The Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Texas officials block US border agents from helping three drowning migrants

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      A Texas congressman said Saturday that three people, including two children, who were seeking asylum in the US drowned while trying to reach the US near the border city of Eagle Pass, where the Biden administration says Texas has begun denying access to border patrol agents.Congressman Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, accused the state of failing to act amid escalating tensions between Texas and the US government over immigration enforcement.Cuellar said the people who drowned were a mother and her two children, an eight-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy.“This is a tragedy, and the state bears responsibility,” Cuellar, who is the top Democrat on the House appropriations committee’s subcommittee on homeland security, said in a statement.On Friday, the Justice Department told the US supreme court that Texas had taken control of an area known as Shelby park and were not letting border patrol agents enter.The park is in Eagle Pass, which is a major crossing point for migrants entering from Mexico and is the center of Republican governor Greg Abbott’s aggressive attempts to stop illegal crossings, known as Operation Lone Star. People crossing the river in that area have been killed when swept away by currents of the Rio Grande.Cuellar, whose district includes the Texas border, said Mexican authorities alerted border patrol of three people in distress struggling in the river late Friday.He said federal agents attempted to call and relay the information to Texas national guard members at Shelby park with no success.Border patrol agents then visited the entrance park, but were “physically barred by Texas officials from entering the area”, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement provided to CNN.“The Texas governor’s policies are cruel, dangerous, and inhumane, and Texas’s blatant disregard for federal authority over immigration poses grave risks,” DHS said.The 50-acre park is owned by the city, but it is used by the state department of public safety and the Texas military department to patrol border crossings. Although daily crossings diminished from the thousands to about 500, state authorities put up fences and stationed military vehicles by the entry to deny access to the public and border patrol agents this week, according to a court filing this week.On Saturday, Texas disputed claims that border patrol agents were denied access to the park. In a response to the court they argued border patrol had scaled down its presence since the summer, when the state moved their resources and manpower to the park.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Texas military department (TMD) said it had searched the river after being contacted by border patrol agents, but had not seen anyone in distress.TMD said officials saw Mexican authorities responding to an incident on the Mexican side of the river about 45 minutes later. At that point TMD ceased search operations after reporting their observations to the border patrol, it said. Border patrol then confirmed that the Mexican authorities did not require additional assistance, TMD said.“At no time did TMD security personnel along the river observe any distressed migrants, nor did TMD turn back any illegal immigrants from the US during this period,” TMD said in a statement.“Also, at no point was TMD made aware of any bodies in the area of Shelby Park, nor was TMD made aware of any bodies being discovered on the US side of the border regarding this situation.”On Saturday, members of the public held a ceremony at the park to mark the deaths of migrants in their region. Julio Vasquez, a pastor in attendance, said access was granted after making extended requests with the city and sharing pictures showing the entry still fenced up and guarded by members of the national guard and military vehicles.
      Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Republicans make wild claims about the dangers of immigration. Here’s the truth | Robert Reich

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      Trumpist Republicans are using the surge of illegal immigration at the southern border of the US, as well as a surge of migrants seeking legal asylum, to threaten a government shutdown and no added funds for Ukraine.They’re using five lies to make their case.1. They claim Biden doesn’t want to stem illegal immigration and has created an “open border”.Rubbish. Since he took office, Biden has consistently asked for additional funding for border control.Republicans have just as consistently refused. They’re voting to cut Customs and Border Protection funding in spending bills and blocking passage of Biden’s $106bn national security supplemental that includes border funding.2. They blame the drug crisis on illegal immigration.Last Wednesday, at the southern border in Texas, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, claimed that “America is at a breaking point with record levels of illegal immigration. We have lethal drugs that are pouring into our country at record levels.”Rubbish. While large amounts of fentanyl and other deadly drugs have been flowing into the United States from Mexico, 90% arrives through official ports of entry, not via immigrants illegally crossing the border. In fact, research by the Cato Institute found that more than 86% of the people convicted of trafficking fentanyl across the border in 2021 were US citizens.3. They claim that undocumented immigrants are terrorists.Johnson also charged that “312 suspects on the terrorist watch list that have been apprehended – we have no idea how many terrorists have come into the country and set up terrorism cells across the nation.”Baloney. America’s southern border has not been an entry point for terrorists. For almost a half century, no American has been killed or injured in a terrorist attack in the United States that involved someone who crossed the border illegally.Johnson’s number comes from government data showing that from October 2020 to November 2023, 312 migrants – out of more than 6.2 million who crossed the southern border during these years – matched names on the terrorist watch list.It’s unclear how many were actual matches and whether the FBI considered them national security threats (the watch list includes family relations of terrorist suspects, many of whom are not considered to be involved in terrorist activity).4. They say undocumented immigrants are stealing American jobs.Nonsense. Evidence shows immigrants are not taking jobs that American workers want.And the surge across the border is not increasing unemployment. Far from it: unemployment has been below 4% for roughly two years, far lower than the long-term average rate of 5.71%. It’s now at 3.7%.5. They claim undocumented immigrants are responsible for more crime in the US.More baloney. In fact, a 2020 study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, cited by the Department of Justice, showed that undocumented immigrants have “substantially” lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants.Similarly, a recently published study in the American Economic Journal – analyzing official data from 2008 to 2017 on immigration, homicide and victimization surveys – found “null effects” on crime from immigration.Notwithstanding the recent surge in illegal immigration, the US homicide rate has fallen nearly 13% since 2022 – the largest decrease on record. Local law enforcement agencies are also reporting drops in violent crime.Who’s really behind these lies?Since he entered politics, Donald Trump has fanned nativist fears and bigotry.He’s now moving into full-throttled neofascism, using the actual rhetoric of Hitler to attack immigrants – charging that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and saying they’re “like a military invasion. Drugs, criminals, gang members and terrorists are pouring into our country at record levels. We’ve never seen anything like it. They’re taking over our cities.”He promises to use the US military to round up undocumented immigrants and put them into “camps”. That demagoguery is being echoed by Trump lackeys to generate fear and put Biden on the defensive.Does the US need to address the border situation? Yes – which Biden is trying to do. But we need to do so in a way that treats migrants as humans, not political pawns.Trump and his enablers want Americans to forget that almost all of us are the descendants of immigrants who fled persecution, or were brought to the US under duress, or simply sought better lives for themselves and their descendants.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More