Key Takeaways From the Republican Convention’s Message on Immigration

Useful summary:

Former President Donald J. Trump and Republicans are in lock step on the issue of immigration, further evidence that he has cemented his grip on the party during his third run for the White House.

At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week, the rhetoric and the party platform match his vision of isolationism and border security, and his suspicion of the people crossing the 2,000-mile line dividing Mexico and the United States, as they have since his first run for president in 2016. But the broadsides have become darker and the language more conspiratorial.

Here are four immigration takeaways from the convention.

Trump’s conspiracies about immigrants and illegal voting have become widespread among Republicans.

In panels and speeches at the convention, falsehoods about noncitizens’ voting have become more pervasive and central to Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

Mark Morgan, a former top Trump immigration official, claimed without evidence that Democrats were encouraging illegal immigration for political reasons, in order to bring more people into their party. Kari Lake, a Trump acolyte and Republican nominee for Senate in Arizona, falsely accused her Democratic opponent of voting “to let the millions of people who poured into our country illegally cast a ballot in this upcoming election.”

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said Democrats “wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children.” Senator Rick Scott of Florida recalled a nightmare, he said, in which “Biden and the Democrats flew so many illegals” into the United States that it “was easy for Democrats to rig the elections.”

Voter fraud is extraordinarily rare, and allegations that widespread numbers of undocumented immigrants are unlawfully voting have been consistently discredited. But Mr. Trump’s false claim, which is being used to disenfranchise Americans, has almost universally been adopted by his party.

Deaths of young women are being used in emotional appeals that tie crime to immigration.

Kate Steinle. Laken Riley. Rachel Morin. Republican political candidates and leaders are invoking the names of women, many of them young and white, who authorities have said were killed by undocumented immigrants. Their deaths have been used to amplify calls for mass deportations and other hard-line immigration restrictions.

On Tuesday, Mr. Cruz drew shudders from some audience members as he described sitting in homes with the grieving families of some the women. “Tonight, I speak for Kate and Laken and Rachel,” he said.

A day later, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas named 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was killed in Houston. Two undocumented Venezuelan men have been charged in her strangling. “She’s one of thousands whose lives have been destroyed by Joe Biden’s open border policies,” he said.

There is little comprehensive data on the crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. But many studies show that crime has gone down while illegal immigration has increased, and that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than are people born in the United States. Republicans say that any crime committed by a person not lawfully in the country is one too many.