Now Trump wants to ban refugees who are fleeing violence

Trump is planning to completely shut down the southern border of the United States to asylum-seekers, many of whom are women and children fleeing tremendous violence in Central America.

And he wants to do it using the same authority he used to implement his racist Muslim ban.

According to The Washington Post, Trump is weighing an executive order that would ban all migrants from Central America who are seeking asylum. The draft proposal under consideration claims Trump can use his executive powers for this purpose because it’s in the interest of national security.

That’s the same reasoning Trump used to implement his Muslim ban, which was repeatedly struck down in court for its obvious discriminatory intent. After multiple revisions, the ban was upheld by the Trump Supreme Court in June.

Trump has also ordered active-duty military troops to the border. According to the Wall Street Journal, the number of troops expected to be deployed has ballooned from 800 to 5,000.

These moves come as Trump wages a racist campaign of lies against the caravan of Honduran migrants and refugees currently making its way through Mexico.

Trump claimed that the caravan contained “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners” — but later admitted he had “no proof of anything” of the sort.

Trump has also repeated conspiracy theories about Democrats funding the caravan, and was unable to provide evidence for the claim when he was called out for it. Similar conspiracy theories were cited by an anti-Semitic mass shooter who murdered 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue this weekend.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen did not dispute the Washington Post report when she was asked about it on Sunday.

When “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace asked Nielsen how women, children, and babies “threaten national security,” she responded with dubious statistics that had nothing to do with the refugee caravan.

But national security is obviously not the point of Trump’s attacks on refugees, or of the ban on asylum-seekers that he’s considering. Because there is no actual evidence these people are a threat, Trump and his officials have resorted to telling lies about them. Moreover, the caravan is still about a thousand miles from the border.

Trump’s mission is to whip up his base with racist fear-mongering about Latino and Middle Eastern people by demonizing families who are fleeing horrific violence.

It’s part of a broader Republican effort to exploit racism in the midterm elections because they have nothing else to run on. And in doing so, GOP is playing games with the lives of innocent people.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.