Grapevine

By Al Jazeera
Sep 15, 2024

‘Going backward’: How demonising migrants remains fertile ground in US

Anti-migrant tropes invoked for political purposes are fuelling dehumanisation and raise risk of violence, experts say.

Washington, DC – Farah Larrieux watched this week’s presidential debate between former United States President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, first from her home in the suburbs of Miami and then online as she headed to a late-night job.

Within minutes of the event starting, Trump had trumpeted a sensational — and false — claim about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating pets in the town of Springfield, Ohio.

Larrieux, herself a Haitian immigrant in the US on a precarious temporary status, found the amplification of the debunked tale both shocking and reprehensible.

But she was also struck by another fact: “It wasn’t even what the question was about,” Larrieux told Al Jazeera.