Reminds me of a Facebook fight I got into on what’s is essentially the “is the lake full yet” group. Talks of Mexican volunteers for the flood victims, and I chimed in I wasn’t surprised every Mexican I’ve ever met is humble, kind and generous. Normal human stuff, people lost their shit about illegal criminals in the US, putting aside the conversation about how we created the migrant mess wanting and needing cheap labor for work no American will ever do again, we got into it over criminals and terrorists. With respect to terrorists I posted the Cato institute’s report that (going from memory so concepts not dialed in 100% factual) in 45 years from 1975-2020 there were 9 terrorists who crossed illegally. One conservative woman thought she had me, not so fast ms troph! She posted an article saying 100 during the 4 year Biden stretch were arrested as potential terrorist threats. A good portion were deported. Others were released (presumably to kill Americans amirite?). I responded, well then if there are 11M undocumented migrants and 100 were possible terrorists we absolutely need to engage in gestapo KGB style round ups over 0.001% of the undocumented migrants (add the 0.001% trans people problem and we are cooking with gas for a massive 0.002% problem - insert fuck yeah woman gif). Criminality is less extreme but it’s well documented (no pun intended) that criminality among undocumented is much lower than among citizens.
George HW and George W Bush had the correct position on immigration. So did Obama and Biden. Covid was a massive outlier both in the complete border shut down and in the influx initially after Covid restrictions lifted but both of them were actually quite strong on illegal immigration for many points in their presidency. This shit doesn’t have to be cruel. Pass modern reform not draconian guns and prison budget explosions and get on down the road. No we can’t do that, so conservatives use extremely weak data points to justify abject cruelty, and actual reform that is good for everyone has no chance. Hashtag winning? Sheesh.