Republicans have no serious plans to address various issues facing the nation. God forbid they might actually have to put in some work when they can just blame immigrants for things. It’s much easier to point at brown people and say, ”They’re the cause of all your problems!” rather than getting to the root cause of the issues. It’s just not sexy, some might of say.
Many of them, like Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn, are more than happy to look like dumbasses when they know better. One tweet she sent on Aug. 16 almost lamented a more than 200% rise in fentanyl seizures by U.S. border officials. To be clear, seizure means they got ‘em. Blackburn also made an “open border” lie. She knows it’s a lie because she celebrated a federal judge’s ruling last May that has kept the anti-asylum Title 42 order in place. But also—how is the border open if the drugs are getting seized?
RELATED: Most arrested for drug smuggling are U.S. citizens. Don't count on GOP to stop attacking migrants
I know, you’re telling me to stop looking for logic where none exists. But we also can’t ignore the fact that Republicans continue to turn this genuine crisis of drug overdoses into anti-immigrant fodder, all the while doing nothing about the victims and their loved ones. You know who else is doing it? Republican Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance, “who used conversations about opioid addiction to launch his political career and has made a false connection between fentanyl and migrants an essential piece of his campaign,” immigrant rights advocacy group America’s Voice said.
“Vance and his deep-pocketed allies have run numerous ads on the topic, while Vance has even gone so far as to suggest that President Joe Biden has intentionally allowed fentanyl to enter the U.S. through the southern border to kill off MAGA voters,” the group continued. “But Vance’s own work on the opioid crisis is just as fraudulent as his attack line, with his non-profit little more than a front to funnel money to his political allies.”
Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis is another one. When he’s not busy trying to weed out the media that gets under his thin skin or is ousting a duly elected official, he’s also trying to tie migrants to the fentanyl crisis.
Mr. Refuses-To-Condemn-Nazis had recently been touting a series of local law enforcement actions from June that he claimed “were able to recover these illegal aliens and enough fentanyl to kill off 2,000 people in the state of Florida,” Miami Herald reported late last month. The action may have resulted in the seizure of the drugs, but implying that migrants had anything to do with the drugs is complete bullshit. “What DeSantis did not mention is that the vast majority of the 22 arrests were not related to immigration but rather tied to men and women who live in the country legally,” the report said. The arrests of seven undocumented people in these actions were all tied to traffic violations, not drugs, as DeSantis tried to imply.
Nor do migrants have anything to do with drugs that are being seized at the southern border. Once again, Customs and Border Protection data has shown that it’s overwhelmingly U.S. citizens who have been caught with drugs at the southern border. “Out of the 42 incidents in which a person's nationality was reported, 33 (79%) involved US citizens. Just three incidents involved a smuggler without legal status,” American Immigration Council Policy Director Aaron Reichlin-Melnick shared in a May 31 Twitter thread. “Only TWO publicly-reported seizures were linked to people crossing between ports of entry,” he wrote in another tweet.
The electoral loss of Liz Cheney this week solidifies the GOP’s standing as a fascist and violent political cult that worships at the altar of an insurrectionist president. Rather than talking about that, they’ll continue to tell you to be afraid of brown families.
America’s Voice said that Democrats should mimic Senate candidate Tim Ryan’s campaign and refuse to let Republicans set the tone. “Ryan’s ad features Dale King, a veteran and a small business owner who hires Ohioans recovering from opioid abuse. King calls out Vance’s selfish failure to do any substantial work on the issue,” the group said.
“Democrats can and should draw a stark contrast with Republicans on the challenges of fentanyl and the opioid crisis,” said America’s Voice political director Zachary Mueller. “It is not the immigration issue Republicans are trying to make. Their ‘divide and distract’ tactics lack real solutions, and their lies are an insult to the communities suffering from the opioid crisis.”
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