In the wake of the deadly Washington DC shooting, Trump claimed immigrants are ‘destroying everything America stands for’. Here’s what the data shows
Donald Trump’s hateful, falsehood-filled rant on Thursday blaming immigrants for crime, “social dysfunction” and economic hardship is refuted by a wide range of immigration statistics, which show clearly that immigrants dramatically bolster the US economy and commit crimes at far lower rates than people born in the US.
On Thursday evening, Trump condemned immigrants in a broad and vicious invective, painting them as “illegal and disruptive populations” and attacking “those that hate, steal, murder and destroy everything that America stands for”. He vowed to block all migration from “third world countries” to allow the “US system to fully recover”.
The president’s post follows a deadly shooting in Washington DC on Wednesday in which one National Guard member was injured and another killed by a 29-year old Afghan national who assisted the US military effort in Afghanistan and was evacuated to the US after the American military withdrew.
The shooting has sparked even more anti-immigration rhetoric from Trump’s administration, which has indicated it will further intensify its crackdown on immigrant communities - already a focal point of fierce opposition from civil rights groups, Democratic lawmakers and the public.
