Milwaukee Immigrant Rights Advocate Slams “Sickening” Rhetoric at RNC as Trump Vows Mass Deportations

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency: Breaking with Convention.”

Anti-immigrant hate speech and misinformation about the U.S.-Mexico border took center stage on the second day of the Republican National Convention. Their theme: immigration and safety. During the evening, Donald Trump’s campaign screened an ad scapegoating migrants and asylum seekers for rising crime in the United States.

NARRATOR: This is the man responsible for your family’s safety. And he’s failed you, terribly. Biden made one of the worst mistakes of any president in history when he told illegals to come here and surge our border.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I would, in fact, make sure that there is — we immediately surge to the border.

NARRATOR: And surge they did. Ten million, more than the population of 40 U.S. states. And Biden’s open border became an open invitation for violent Venezuelan gang members, sex traffickers, and, now confirmed, ISIS terrorists entered through Biden’s wide-open southern border, putting America on high alert for an attack and your family at great risk.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: We immediately surge to the border.

NARRATOR: But it gets even worse. Biden’s incompetence has led to a horrific 300,000 Americans now dead, not from a nuclear bomb, but from lethal fentanyl brought in through Biden’s wide-open border. And on Biden’s watch, enough illegal fentanyl has crossed our borders to kill every single America.

AMY GOODMAN: Again, that was an ad falsely claiming Biden’s so-called open border policies have facilitated the smuggling of fentanyl. In fact, evidence shows fentanyl is largely smuggled by U.S. citizens across U.S. ports of entry. Some of the images that were shown in the ad is of caravans of migrants, many of them families, as they attempt to reach the U.S.-Mexico border to seek relief.

For more, we’re joined here in Milwaukee by longtime immigrant rights activist Christine Neumann-Ortiz, founding executive director of Voces de la Frontera and Voces de la Frontera Action.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

CHRISTINE NEUMANN–ORTIZ: Thank you, Amy. It’s my pleasure.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to be in your city. Can you talk about the feeling here? You have over at Fiserv, at the convention center, an ad like that, that is airing, blaming rising crime and drug abuse in this country on immigrants.

CHRISTINE NEUMANN–ORTIZ: I guess I compare it to when Trump ran in 2016. And I think what was shocking was just this gross generalization of immigrants that was a real, I’d say, Pandora’s box to basically what we’ve seen, which has been the growth of a far-right movement in the United States, consolidated now under the — now, to the present, within the GOP, led by Trump, self-decried the party of Trump, and whose primary platform is promoting hateful rhetoric, promoting authoritarianism and promoting violence. And it has become now a white supremacist party and is a real threat to democracy. That’s the real threat to democracy, is their record, their rhetoric and their platform, if they’re allowed to achieve a second term.

It obviously is best exemplified with their attack against immigrants, which they portray as all, you know, cartels, as opposed to immigrants and asylum seekers who are coming to the United States to seek refuge or to contribute to our economy, to contribute to our communities, and that the biggest problem that we have is not this false narrative on crime, which actually goes counter to all of the evidence, just as you said, in terms of, like, the fentanyl — it is being largely brought in by U.S. citizens at legal ports of entries — or crime, in general. In areas where there are more undocumented people, and especially where you have policies that promote public safety, where law enforcement does not play an immigration enforcement role, on the contrary, you have less crime. Those are safer communities.

And obviously, it ignores the humanity of immigrants. He recently, you know, made a comment about, “Well, we’re going to have to deport all these people. It’s going to be some bad guys. And I’m sure there’ll be a good mother there.” And then he laughed, and all others laughed with him. And it’s that kind of dehumanization, desensitization and this promotion of these cruel policies of rounding people up and tearing them apart from their families, without regard to their humanity or their contributions, that I think is the greatest danger and has contributed to hate crimes.

AMY GOODMAN: They’ve continually attacked what they call President Biden and Kamala Harris’s open border policy. Is that how you would characterize it?

CHRISTINE NEUMANN–ORTIZ: It’s such a joke. It’s such a joke.

AMY GOODMAN: Because Biden has been so fiercely criticized, especially by progressive movements, for further militarizing the border, following through on President Trump, his first term.

CHRISTINE NEUMANN–ORTIZ: Yeah. In fact, it’s — yeah, I mean, since Biden came into office, he actually upheld programs like Title 42, which was a program by Trump and Stephen Miller, also programs like “Remain in Mexico,” really trying to — putting more money onto the border to prevent asylum seekers, working with other governments to try to kind of push them out, and is being sued right now, just as Trump was being sued, because it’s in violation of human rights laws. So, it is very contrary.

The reality is, is that we — these enforcement-only policies that we have, the only thing that that has contributed to is actually empowering cartels, because then you’ve created a black market. And you’ve also created a humanitarian crisis, where people who are already fleeing dangerous conditions, whether that’s domestic abuse, cartels, you know, natural disasters, are now prey to these cartels.

So, we need a legal system for people in the United States who have been here decades, and we need a legal system on our border that’s also going to invest in integrating and really amplifying people’s full potential, especially in a tight labor market where we need to benefit from more working people. So, you know, that’s something that the GOP has also been blocking, because they want this crisis, to use it to demonize and to run on this platform of hate.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, we covered the protest of hundreds of people here in Milwaukee right before the convention opened. But that doesn’t compare, it sounds like, to the protests that will take place in Chicago at the Democratic convention. And I’m not talking about Trump supporters. There may be, you know, Trump supporters protesting Biden. But I’m talking about grassroots activists from around the country. Last night, I bumped into Chicago police, and I asked them what were their plans for Chicago. They said, “It’s going to be chaos.” You’re here, though, critiquing the Trump administration. What would a second Trump term mean, following up on a first term, when it comes to migrants and asylum seekers?

CHRISTINE NEUMANN–ORTIZ: It’s a very serious situation. He is going to fulfill his promise to be dictator on day one, because we have seen his pathway to power through the Project 2025 and the control of all of the federal government agencies by his ideologues.

AMY GOODMAN: Go further into Project 2025, particularly as it relates to immigration, this more than 900-page document, that Trump says he knows nothing about, but now tape has been unearthed about him praising this project that was coordinated by a number of conservative groups and helmed by the Heritage Foundation.

CHRISTINE NEUMANN–ORTIZ: Yes, and a number of those people were Trump advisers in his first administration and have ties to white supremacist organizations. And so, a big part of it is actually reflected in the GOP platform. It includes the mass — the largest military-style deportation of immigrants in this country. And this includes not just people on the border, but it includes people inside the United States that have been here for decades. It also includes eliminating the family-based immigration system that we have, that is something that many people value. And, you know, his supporters, as well, have also benefited from those programs, that ability to petition a family member.

And the other piece is to eliminate a lot of the due process rights that people would have, by these expediated, you know, large detention centers and flying people out immediately, to really eliminate the ability to have legal rights, bringing back these anti-sanctuary policies that would try to take away federal funding from cities or states that have policies, again, that have shown to be — promote more public safety by delinking local law enforcement from federal immigration enforcement.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the movement, immigrants’ rights movement, how it grew so much out of the Trump administration?

CHRISTINE NEUMANN–ORTIZ: Yeah. Here in Wisconsin, I think one of the things that we saw, as was seen across the country, was a real coordinated effort to implement these sanctuary policies. And it was very beautiful and inspiring to see so many diverse people come together to pass what sometimes are called welcoming centers. For example, here in Milwaukee County or in the city or through the sheriff, we were able to link efforts to affirm that our cities are welcoming communities, that we value the diversity of all people, that our schools, certain schools, and areas are going to be safe zones, so that immigration couldn’t just come in and do raid sweeps.

And one of those most important ones, I think, here was the — and it actually was national, as well — was a large strike called A Day Without Latinos, if people recall, that kind of went viral, started here in Wisconsin and then went viral, where workers protested by going on strike to, again, affirm their positive economic contributions. In our case, it was directly related to the effort of this 287(g) program that was going to be implemented here in Milwaukee County. But because of tens of thousands of people going out in a general strike and large march and then forming coalitions, we were able to drive out the former Sheriff Clarke and also get rid of this program.

There were also mass protests, of course, as we all know, against the separation of families policy. And this is a program that J.D. Vance, as well as Trump, want to bring back. So, they want to fuel everything. And in part, the pandemic had interrupted part of that process. But in a second term, under this new federal control of his people, you know, I can — you know, he has definitely said that he wants to bring back those policies. And it’s sickening. What does it mean? It means that he celebrates tearing a child away from their parents, as they did in these detention centers, deporting them regardless of what their consequences were, also fighting to remove protections for their well-being, whether it’s against physical abuse, sexual abuse, you know, just having food and water, proper treatment. All of that, he fought and is fighting to remove, so that immigrants don’t get that care.

So, I think it’s very disconcerting, if we desensitize ourselves to a group of people that he’s defining as the other. So, when they talk about immigrants, as Trump has said, “Oh, it’s only certain people from certain countries,” and then, for everybody else, it’s these policies of cruelty and mass deportation, that would have huge consequences, first and foremost, around human rights — and, obviously, they’re not the only ones that are being targeted — but also around destabilizing our economy, because immigrants, for example, here in Wisconsin, 80% work in the dairy industry. So you would have the collapse of an entire industry. And immigrants are not taking jobs; they’re complementing to jobs. And they’re actually — you know, have been helping to bring down inflation, have been — you know, when we’ve had opportunities, such as DACA, have been able to fill other types of jobs where they’re needed, and that is a benefit for everyone, where we have more teachers, where we have more nurses.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis joking about his efforts tricking asylum seekers when they were being flown to Martha’s Vineyard, an island off of Massachusetts, in 2022. This is him speaking at the RNC.

GOV. RON DESANTIS: Biden is just a figurehead. He’s a tool for imposing a leftist agenda on the American people. They support open borders, allowing millions and millions of illegal aliens to pour into our country and to burden our communities. But just don’t send any to Martha’s Vineyard. Then they get really upset.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Your response, Christine?

CHRISTINE NEUMANN–ORTIZ: That’s a perfect example of the kind of demonization, politicization and cruelty — real politics affecting real people — where you have people who are asylum seekers fleeing violence, who were tricked into these buses, to be dumped off as a political act, regardless of what they’re — you know, of their rights and also of the opportunity to actually be integrated into society, regardless of — so, there’s no sympathy.

And I think what I would say is that my message is that we cannot allow a second Trump administration. For me, I look at it not even as the candidates, but as a political movement, a social justice movement. And under which administration are we going to be able to defend the gains that we’ve made on all kinds of issues? And under which administration are we going to be able to advance our rights? So, the question is not so much about the candidates. It’s about the social justice movement. And we cannot afford an authoritarian government to come to power. And we must continue to fight, defend what we’ve achieved and make sure that we advance on those progresses.

AMY GOODMAN: How are you organizing in this swing state of Wisconsin for November? Thirty seconds.

CHRISTINE NEUMANN–ORTIZ: Three ways. The most important way, Voceros por el Voto, which is our statewide relational voter program, through families and friends, it has been packing a punch in every election since 2018, and we’re going to continue to build that out. We built that out to 23,000 Latino voters and youth, many of which wouldn’t have been involved. And then traditional ways, knocking on doors and talking to people. But the relational program is at the heart of it. And I really encourage other people in other states to do that. It’s, you know, who you know. You’re the trusted messenger, and you need to get the word out, because every vote counts.

AMY GOODMAN: Christine Neumann-Ortiz, founding executive director of Voces de la Frontera and Voces de la Frontera Action.

Coming up, the Democratic National Committee is pushing for Joe Biden to be nominated before next month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, despite growing calls for him to step aside. Stay with us.