Many want a tougher grip – advantage Trump among voters • Joel Smith fights back
When Donald Trump took the stage at Madison Square Garden last weekend, he asked the production to show his favorite graph on the screens. It’s the same graph he faced in Butler, Pennsylvania the moment Thomas Matthew Crooks started shooting at the stage where the former president was standing. Trump says graphene saved his life. The question is whether it is the graphene that will also carry him all the way to the White House.
The graph shows how the number of illegal border crossings has increased under President Biden, compared to Trump’s presidency. Over 8 million people have crossed the border into Mexico illegally during the four years Joe Biden has been president. The same figure for Trump was 2.1 million.
Most important for many
When voters head to the polls on Tuesday, inflation will be the top issue for most Americans. Then comes security at the border with Mexico. It’s also the issue where Trump has the biggest lead over Kamala Harris in terms of who voters think can solve the issue best, 16 percentage points, according to the Wall Street Journal’s latest poll.
Since Joe Biden became president, the number of Americans who want to see reduced immigration to the country has increased by nearly 30 percentage points from 28 to 55, according to Gallup. 56 percent, say they favor mass deportations, even though most believe they will be impractical, in practical terms. One of those who believe so, but still hopes for Donald Trump, is local Republican politician David Lara. He lives in San Luis, right on the border with Mexico.
– What we need is for order to be restored, he says to TV4 Nyheterna.
– Right now it is chaos, the border is wide open and there is no control. With Trump this can be fixed and we can once again become a sovereign state.
Water for migrants
In the Arizona desert there is a man who thinks differently. Joel Smith works for an aid organization that places water cans in the desert for migrants. A trek to enter the United States can, according to Smith, take up to 10 days. In extreme heat during the day and freezing cold at night. In 2022, almost 700 migrants died in the desert – the vast majority from dehydration. He looks with concern at what he calls the politics of hate. Over the years, the organization’s more than 40 water stations have been destroyed and vandalized several times.
Joel Smith will vote for Kamala Harris, but does not have high hopes that it will lead to a more humane migration policy. Kamala Harris has also greatly changed her rhetoric in recent years. Now she promises more border police and has completely stopped criticizing Donald Trump’s wall construction.
– I don’t think anything will change. People try to get here, fleeing conflicts, or just hoping for a better life. These are completely basic human mechanisms that never change, he says.
– This started under Bill Clinton. It continued under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. What Trump brought was even more inhumanity and Joe Biden has simply ignored it. Quite frankly, I don’t see any change coming from Washington DC. And that is only where the power to do something is.
There is no doubt that the border issue can be decisive, writes analyst Nate Silver in his newsletter: “The border may be what ultimately decides this election in Trump’s favor.”