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Statistics and studies show rhetoric about immigrants and crime is often exaggerated or false. So why do these false narratives spread?

Sign on to social media these days and you’ll soon find posts warning about the threat of immigrants to your family’s – and your pets’ – safety.

Immigrants are eating the dogs, cats and geese in Springfield, Ohio, some posts have claimed. (They’re wrong.) They’re also taking over apartment complexes in Colorado and Chicago, or hijacking school buses in California, others have said. (No, they’re not. That’s false.)

Much of the rhetoric about a purported immigrant crime wave has stemmed from or was amplified by former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, his supporters and other high-profile conservatives on social media, such as X owner Elon Musk.

Trump has said immigrants “are poisoning the blood” of our country. He recently said in Wednesday’s campaign rally in Mint Hill, North Carolina, if Vice President Kamala Harris had closed the border years ago, “we wouldn’t have hostile takeovers of Springfield, Ohio, Aurora, Colorado, where they’re actually going in with massive machine-gun type equipment. They’re going in with guns that are beyond even military scope.”

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