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What’s behind recent false claims about immigrants and crime in the US?
Statistics and studies show rhetoric about immigrants and crime is often exaggerated or false. So why do these false narratives spread?
By Jeff Cercone | PolitiFact
Published On 29 Sep 202429 Sep 2024
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.”
Violent crimes in which immigrants are suspects have fueled the rhetoric, such as the slaying of Georgia college student Laken Riley, whose death came up in President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech in March. There are also real concerns about a growing presence of Venezuelan gangs in the US, say federal and local law enforcement.
But experts told PolitiFact – and crime statistics and studies show – that the rhetoric about immigrants and crime is often exaggerated or false.
Such rhetoric is nothing new, especially during a political campaign, experts said.
“Ever since the US has had migrants, a subset of them have been vilified,” Alex Piquero, a University of Miami criminology professor and former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, said. The same thing is happening elsewhere, including the United Kingdom and Sweden, he added.
PolitiFact has debunked numerous claims about immigrants and crime:
There’s no evidence Haitian immigrants are eating pets, wildlife in Springfield
Perhaps no claim about immigrants and crime has garnered more attention than this one. In early September, social media posts flooded the internet with claims that Haitian immigrants, thousands of whom have flocked legally to Springfield in recent years, were eating residents’ pets and ducks and geese at local parks.
The claim is baseless, Springfield officials told PolitiFact and have said repeatedly.
It stemmed from a fourthhand account in a private Facebook group that went viral after a screenshot of the post was shared by the verified X account End Wokeness, whose post received nearly 5 million views. The Facebook post said a neighbour’s daughter’s friend came home from work to find a pet cat butchered and hanging from a tree in a Haitian neighbour’s yard. The post’s author said Haitians were doing the same to dogs and ducks and geese at a local park.
The woman behind the original post later told NBC News she had no firsthand knowledge of immigrants eating pets, and that she regrets the fallout from sharing the post. The neighbour referenced in her post told NewsGuard she also had no proof of the rumour.
The claims about eating pets and birds were further amplified on X and in interviews by Ohio Senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate. Trump repeated the baseless claim in his September 10 debate with Harris in Philadelphia, saying “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
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The Trump-Vance campaign persisted with their claims, pointing to a Federalist report about a person calling the Clark County Communications Center claiming to have seen four Haitians carrying geese. PolitiFact reported that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources followed up on the report but found no evidence to support the claim.
The claims have had a lasting impact on Springfield’s Haitian immigrants, many of whom told PolitiFact that they now fear for their safety.
A Venezuelan gang takeover in Aurora, Colorado? City officials, residents say no
After surveillance video showing what appears to be armed, Spanish-speaking men entering an Aurora, Colorado apartment complex, fears were stoked online about a Venezuelan gang seizing control of the building.
Social media posts said the men were part of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. The claims were amplified on X by Elon Musk and Trump, who said in a September 6 interview that noncitizens “took over buildings” in Aurora.
Tren de Aragua formed in the Venezuelan state of Aragua more than a decade ago. It does have a presence in the US, but Aurora city officials and apartment residents at The Edge, the apartment building seen in the video, disputed claims that the gang took over the building, PolitiFact reported.
Residents at The Edge blamed poor conditions there on the landlord.
Reports about 32 Venezuelan armed migrants taking over a Chicago building are fake
As social media posts warning of migrants taking over neighborhoods across the country proliferated online, an audio recording of a police dispatcher in Chicago had high-profile accounts sharing the news that Venezuelan migrants had purportedly taken over a building there.
“Caller says 32 Venezuelans are trespassing the building, showing guns in the courtyard,” the dispatcher said.
PolitiFact reported that the Chicago Police Department said it received a service call about Venezuelans with guns trespassing, but the incident reported in the call was “not bona fide”.
The alderperson who represents the area where the incident was reported said the reports were untrue. So did migrants living in the building and residents in the area.
Two school buses filled with children weren’t hijacked by migrants in San Diego
Incidents involving two San Diego-area school bus routes sparked misinformation on social media that armed migrants were trying to hijack the buses, PolitiFact reported.
In separate incidents, groups of people approached two Jamul-Dulzura Union School District buses on Highway 94 in Dulzura, an unincorporated part of San Diego County.
On August 27, three men walked into the middle of Highway 94 and tried to stop a bus. The bus driver steered around the group in response. The next day, it appeared a group of about 20 people intended to board a school bus during morning pickup at a bus stop.
Officials said there was no attempted hijacking and no crimes were committed. Many migrants who crossed the San Diego-Mexico border are served in that area by humanitarian groups as they await processing. Some of the groups operate vehicles similar to school buses.
Assault suspect in Wisconsin wasn’t ‘released’ by Madison police
Police in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, arrested a man they said they believe is a member of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang in the assault of a woman and her daughter in September.
That case became fodder for Republican political candidates, who claimed the suspect was arrested and released in Madison because of sanctuary city policies.
PolitiFact Wisconsin took a closer look at the case. It found that Madison police did have a warrant for the suspect’s arrest before the assault, but he was never in custody, the Dane County sheriff’s office and Madison police said. Madison also does not have an official sanctuary city policy, and the Dane County sheriff disputed claims that the department is “noncooperative” with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
What does the data show?
Studies have historically shown that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than US citizens. No available data backs claims that there is a migrant crime wave happening in the US, despite the online and political rhetoric.
There is no national data that tracks and correlates immigrants coming into the country with crime, and any research studies on the topic tend to lag behind releases of FBI crime statistics, experts told PolitiFact.
“If we pay attention to what the last 80 years of studies have told us, we would see, in general, that there’s likely to be no significant impact on crime” because of increased immigration, Charis Kubrin, a University of California, Irvine criminology, law and society professor, and member of the Council on Criminal Justice, said.
Several studies compared US citizens and immigrants in Texas, the only state that keeps immigration status records on people arrested and convicted of state crimes. They overwhelmingly found that noncitizens are less likely than citizens to be convicted or incarcerated.
Some examples:
- A July 2023 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research looked at incarceration rates nationally of immigrants and US-born citizens over a 150-year period (1870 to 2020) and found immigrants are 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated.
- A study of Texas data from 2012 to 2018 showed undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born US citizens for violent and drug crimes.
- Two other studies out of Texas showed similar results. One published in 2000 showed immigrants with lower incarceration rates from homicide than US-born offenders. Another in 2021 comparing people incarcerated for homicide in Texas showed US citizens had higher crime rates than immigrants over the course of their criminal careers.
- A Cato Institute analysis comparing Texas’s homicide conviction rates among immigrants legally and illegally in the US and US citizens from 2013 to 2022 showed native-born Americans had the highest rate.
- The Marshall Project examined crime data in cities such as New York and Chicago after Texas. Governor Greg Abbott began busing migrants to what he called sanctuary cities. They found no link between crime and the recent migrant influx.
An FBI data release published on September 23, though not specific to immigration status, also dampens any claims of increased crime because of immigrants. That’s because US crime was down significantly in 2023, the most recent data available – violent crimes were down 3 percent from 2022 and property crimes were down 2.4 percent. Murder has dropped 11.6 percent, the data shows.
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The FBI data “is inconsistent with the idea that an influx of migrants is driving up crime across the US”, said Graham Ousey, a College of William & Mary sociology professor. “If a recent surge of migrants was creating a crime wave, we’d expect the recent data to show this. It really does not.”
Ousey pointed us to more recent data from the Real-Time Crime Index which has tracked data through June 2024 that shows a drop in violent crime this year, including in big cities.
A July Council on Criminal Justice analysis showed violent crimes in US cities through June 2024 have dropped to or are slightly below pre-pandemic levels.
Another data point that dispels the notion of a rise in immigrant violent crime is a 30 percent spike in US homicides in 2020, the same year immigration dropped sharply because of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Michael Light, a sociology professor at the University of Madison, Wisconsin.
“In 2020 border crossings and apprehensions dropped dramatically, and yet, it was that year that the US saw the largest increase in homicide on record,” Light wrote in an email. “These homicide increases disproportionately involved young Black men, which again, suggest that they had little to do with immigration flows.”
Why are these false claims proliferating?
Experts told us a false narrative about immigrants and crime has proliferated for decades and is often heightened by politics.
Kubrin, who co-authored the book, Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock, with Ousey, said these claims pop up during election cycles, or when crime rates are higher or immigration is increasing.
“There’s this kind of response to treat immigrants as the scapegoats for problems in American society,” Kubrin said, adding that social media has made the spread of such fears easier.
“There’s always these kind of moral panics about immigration,” Kubrin said.
Kubrin, who teaches a college class where students examine immigration in different time periods, cited the false claims out of Springfield, Ohio, as an example of a historical trope demonising immigrants as the “other” or as savages.
“It really taps into the xenophobia that many people have around otherness and foreign bornness,” Kubrin said. “On the one hand, it’s laughable and silly and ridiculous. On the other hand, it’s very dangerous.”
Ousey said the narrative about immigrant crime is an attempt to aid political objectives.
“When politicians amplify fears in the population, and then claim they (the politician) are the only ones capable of providing protection and security from whatever ‘threat’ creates the fear, the politician derives an electoral benefit,” Ousey said. “That’s the goal and that’s why they keep hammering on the narrative.”
Piquero said it’s rooted in a “long-standing theory called ‘minority threat,’” which holds that as a minority group grows and gains power, “the majority group becomes threatened and then they are vilified.”
There are real crimes committed by immigrants, Kubrin said, that shouldn’t be dismissed. But to extrapolate isolated cases and use language like “migrant crime wave” is problematic.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
Video Duration 02 minutes 56 seconds02:56
Published On 5 Nov 20245 Nov 2024
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- After a heated presidential campaign, millions of voters across the United States are gearing up to cast their ballots on Election Day.
- Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump are going head-to-head in a race that remains too close to call.
- What time do polls close in your state on Election Day in the US?Millions of Americans are set to cast their ballots after a heated presidential election campaign.Tuesday is the final day to cast a ballot, and below, we’ve assembled a broad overview of when polling stations close in each of the 50 states, which span six time zones. Check it out here.Click here to share on social media
- 20m ago (09:20 GMT)‘I Voted’ stickers are running their own contestIn Georgia, it’s adorned with a peach. In the seaside city of San Francisco, it boasts sea lions and the Golden Gate Bridge.The “I Voted” sticker is the traditional prize of casting a ballot on Election Day – and different jurisdictions around the US use their versions to show off their local pride.Some areas even encourage submissions from residents. A fan favourite this year came from Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, where 12-year-old Jane Hynous submitted a drawing to a local “I Voted” sticker competition – and came away victorious.Her entry? A deranged werewolf, ripping its shirt in two: a perfect portrait of the pathos of election season.
A volunteer helps cut “I Voted” stickers at the Boyle Heights Senior Center on Monday, in Los Angeles [Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo]Click here to share on social media - 30m ago (09:10 GMT)
Key economic data that landed in the final days of the raceThe monthly jobs report, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, showed that the economy added about 12,000 jobs in October. In September, by comparison, the economy added about 223,000 jobs.For Harris, who is rated as less competent than Trump to handle the economy in most polls, the report could have hardly arrived at a worse time. Unsurprisingly, the Trump campaign held up the report as evidence of economic mismanagement by the Biden-Harris administration, branding the jobs figure a “catastrophe”.The picture, however, is complicated by the fact that the period overlapped with hurricanes Helene and Milton and strike action by more than 30,000 Boeing employees.Even so, the figure fell well short of expectations: economists polled by Dow Jones, who took into account the hurricanes and the strike, had predicted 100,000 jobs. Still, there are other strong economic metrics to consider, too, including 2.8 percent growth in the third quarter.Click here to share on social media - 40m ago (09:00 GMT)Harris’s Indian ancestral village is praying for her victoryResidents of the tiny South Indian village of Thulasendrapuram in Tamil Nadu have gathered to pray for Harris, who could become the first United States leader with South Asian roots.Harris’s maternal grandfather was born in the village, about 350 kilometres (217 miles) from the southern coastal city of Chennai, more than 100 years ago. As an adult, he moved to Chennai, where he worked as a high-ranking government official until his retirement.Harris has never visited Thulasendrapuram and she has no living relatives in the village, but people here still venerate the family that made it big in the US.“Our village ancestors’ granddaughter is running as a US presidential candidate. Her victory will be happy news for every one of us,” M Natarajan, the temple priest, told The Associated Press.Natarajan led prayers in front of the image of the Hindu deity Ayyanar, a form of Lord Shiva. “Our deity is a very powerful God. If we pray well to him, he will make her victorious,” he said.
Villagers participate in special prayers for the victory of the Democratic presidential nominee in Thulasendrapuram, an ancestral village of Harris, in Tamil Nadu state, India [Aijaz Rahi/AP]Click here to share on social media - 50m ago (08:50 GMT)Texas, Missouri judges deny requests to block Justice Department from sending poll monitorsUS judges have denied requests from the Republican-led states of Missouri and Texas to block the federal government from sending lawyers to their states on Election Day to monitor compliance with federal voting rights laws.Both states are among the 27 that the US Justice Department said it would send monitoring staff to at voting locations, as it has done regularly during national elections.Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had said sending monitors “infringes on States’ constitutional authority to run free and fair elections”.Trump continues to falsely claim that his 2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud. He has urged his supporters to turn out at polling locations to watch for suspected fraud.Click here to share on social media
- 1h ago (08:40 GMT)It’s voting day. Here’s what polls say, what Harris and Trump are up toAccording to FiveThirtyEight’s daily tracker, Harris has a 1.2-point lead over Trump nationally, a margin that has remained fairly static in recent days, though it has shrunk compared with a month ago.In swing states, Harris has a one-point advantage in Michigan and Wisconsin, according to the same tracker.Harris spent the final day campaigning in Pennsylvania. The Democratic candidate started with an event in Scranton, the hometown of President Joe Biden.Trump continued his campaign with a whirlwind tour through North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan.In his first stop at Raleigh, North Carolina, the Republican candidate claimed a decisive advantage in the presidential race. He then went to Reading, Pennsylvania, where he again suggested that he would carry out mass deportations of immigrants.Read our full story here.Click here to share on social media
- 1h ago (08:30 GMT)US presidential candidates end their final campaign rallies
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Monday [Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters]
Supporters of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris attend a campaign rally in Philadelphia [Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters]
Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump reacts during his campaign rally at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Tuesday [Brian Snyder/Reuters]
Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump dances at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids [Carlos Osorio/Reuters]Click here to share on social media - 1h ago (08:25 GMT)What did Harris say in her closing argument in Pennsylvania?Harris ended her campaign in Philadelphia, at the art museum steps made famous in the movie Rocky, and was introduced by Oprah Winfrey and Lady Gaga.“The momentum is on our side,” she said, focusing on optimism about the future and never mentioning Trump by name.She doubled down on the economy, a key issue for US voters grappling with unemployment and inflation, and outlined her plan to “build an economy where we bring down the cost of living”.Among the measures she intends to implement, she listed a ban on corporate price gouging on groceries; cutting taxes for workers, middle-class families and small businesses; and lowering healthcare costs, including the cost of home care for seniors.
Oprah Winfrey introduces US Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the eve of Election Day [Angela Weiss/ AFP]Click here to share on social media - Sign up for Al JazeeraAmericas Coverage NewsletterUS politics, Canada’s multiculturalism, South America’s geopolitical rise—we bring you the stories that matter.Subscribe
By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policyprotected by reCAPTCHA - 1h ago (08:24 GMT)A recap of the latest developmentsLet’s bring you up to speed:
- Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump have made their final appeals to American voters ahead of Election Day on Tuesday.
- Harris has stressed she intends to be a “president for all” at her closing campaign rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania while Trump pledges to lead the US to “new heights of glory” at an event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
- Polls continue to show the candidates locked in a close battle for the White House, with the race likely to come down to key swing states.
- More than 82 million Americans have voted ahead of Election Day, according to a tally by the University of Florida’s Election Lab.
- 1h ago (08:24 GMT)Photos: Harris and Trump deliver final pleas to US voters
Harris speaks during a rally in Pennsylvania, November 4 [Susan Walsh/AP Photo]
Trump dances at an event in Pennsylvania, November 4 [Chris Szagola/AP Photo]
[Jeenah Moon/Reuters]
Harris supporters ahead of her speech in Philadelphia [Hannah McKay/Reuters]Click here to share on social media - 1h ago (08:24 GMT)Where do Harris, Trump stand on key issues?Harris and Trump have spent months pitching their different visions for the country.The presidential candidates advocated to solve the country’s problems, diverging on most of the policies and only agreeing on some.From the economy to foreign policy, immigration, abortion and crime, we’ve taken a closer look at their campaign platforms and promises.Have a look at their positions on the key issues in our story, here.
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How will US Election Day unfold?Millions of Americans will head to polling booths to cast their ballots in the US presidential election.Voters will also elect 34 US senators (out of 100) and all 435 members for the US House of Representatives, among other posts that are up for grabs.With the country stretching across six time zones, Election Day is a massive undertaking – and voting will begin as early as 5am EST (10:00 GMT) and go as late as 1am (06:00 GMT) on Wednesday.Check out our hour-by-hour breakdown of how Election Day will unfold, in our explainer, here.Click here to share on social media - 1h ago (08:23 GMT)What did Trump say in his closing argument in Michigan?Trump showed up more than 90 minutes after he was scheduled to begin his remarks in Grand Rapids, Michigan. An old clip of Trump shaving the head of disgraced former WWE CEO and longtime associate Vince McMahon on a wrestling show was played to entertain the crowd.He started the rally by recounting his unlikely victory in 2016 and then predicted the greatest victory ‘in the history of our country’. He even claimed that God had saved him from an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in July so that he could “save America.”He again linked immigration to a high crime rate, despite data showing the opposite, blending false claims about voter fraud with warnings about migrants committing crimes and promises to revitalise the United States.“Over the past four years, Americans have suffered one catastrophic failure, betrayal and humiliation after another,” Trump said. He added that “we do not have to settle for weakness, incompetence, decline, and decay.”Click here to share on social media
- 1h ago (08:18 GMT)Welcome to our live coverageIt’s officially Election Day in the United States!Millions of Americans will head to the polls on November 5 to cast their ballots after a heated presidential election campaign.Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump are locked in a close fight, with recent polls showing the race remains too close to call nationally and in key battleground states.Stay with Al Jazeera’s Live team as we bring you the latest developments, analyses and reactions from across the US.
Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during his final campaign rally at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the early hours of Tuesday [Jeff Kowalsky/AFP]Click here to share on social media
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
The state’s top Democratic legal official says the giveaway in states likely to decide the US election is a ‘scam’.
Published On 5 Nov 20245 Nov 2024
A $1m-a-day voter sweepstakes operated by a political group established by billionaire Elon Musk can continue, a judge in the state of Pennsylvania has ruled.
Last month, the world’s richest man announced he would start the giveaway in seven battleground states likely to decide the outcome of the United States 2024 election.
Musk’s giveaway has widely been seen by many as an unsubtle attempt to secure extra votes for Republican candidate Donald Trump, who Musk has thrown his vocal and financial support behind.
Musk has given $75m to America PAC, a political action committee that has been funding various Republican candidates, including former President Trump.
Winners ‘not chosen by chance’
The Tesla CEO has already gifted $16m to registered swing-state voters who qualified for the giveaway by signing his political petition.
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Pennsylvania‘s Common Pleas Court Judge Angelo Foglietta’s decision on Monday came after a surprising day of testimony in a state court in which Musk’s aides acknowledged hand-picking the winners of the contest based on who would be the best spokespeople for his super PAC’s agenda.
Previously, the 53-year-old billionaire had claimed the winners would be chosen at random.
District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, called the process a scam “designed to actually influence a national election” and asked that it be shut down.
As it was, the judge ruled in favour of Musk and his America PAC.
Musk’s lawyer, Chris Gober, said the final two recipients before the presidential election would be announced in Arizona on Monday and Michigan on Tuesday.
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“The $1 million recipients are not chosen by chance,” said Gober.
“We know exactly who will be announced as the $1 million recipient today and tomorrow.”
‘They were scammed’
Chris Young, the director and treasurer of America PAC, testified that the recipients were vetted ahead of time, to “feel out their personality, [and] make sure they were someone whose values aligned” with the group.
Musk’s lawyers, defending the effort, called it “core political speech” given that participants were asked to sign a petition endorsing the US Constitution.
More than 1 million people from the seven battleground states – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan – have registered for the sweepstakes by signing a petition saying they support the right to free speech and to bear arms, the first two amendments to the US Constitution.
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District Attorney Krasner has questioned how the PAC might use their data, which it will have on hand well past the election.
“They were scammed for their information,” Krasner said. “It has almost unlimited use.”
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
Support for Green Party candidate grows as some voters stress the need to break away from Democrats and Republicans.
By Ali Harb
Published On 4 Nov 20244 Nov 2024
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Dearborn, Michigan – On a sunny but frigid afternoon, dozens of protesters stood on a street corner in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn and chanted against Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris as well as her Republican rival Donald Trump.
“Trump and Harris, you can’t hide, no votes for genocide,” a keffiyeh-clad young woman chanted on a bullhorn. The small but spirited crowd echoed her words.
If not Trump or Harris for the next United States president, then who?
The Abandon Harris campaign that organised the protest has endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein, demonstrating the growing disconnect that many Arabs and Muslims feel with both major parties over their support for Israel.
Stein has been gaining popularity in Arab and Muslim communities amid Israel’s brutal war on Gaza and Lebanon, public opinion polls show.
While the Green Party candidate is extremely unlikely to win the presidency, her supporters view voting for her as a principled choice that can set a foundation for greater viability for third-party candidates in the future.
Hassan Abdel Salam, a co-founder of the Abandon Harris campaign, said more and more voters are adopting the group’s position of ditching the two major candidates and backing Stein.
“She best exemplifies our position against genocide,” Abdel Salam said of the Green Party candidate, who has been vocal in supporting Palestinian rights.
The strategy
Abandon Harris has been urging voters against supporting the vice president over her pledge to continue arming Israel amid the US ally’s offensives in Gaza and Lebanon, which have killed more than 46,000 people.
Abdel Salam praised Stein as courageous and willing to take on both major parties despite recent attacks, especially by Democrats.
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For the Abandon Harris campaign, backing Stein is not only about principles; it is part of a broader strategy.
“Our goal is to punish the vice president because of the genocide, to then take the blame for her defeat to send a signal to the political landscape that you should never have ignored us,” Abdel Salam told Al Jazeera.
In addition to the endorsement of the Abandon Harris campaign, Stein has won the backing of the American Arab and Muslim Political Action Committee (AMPAC), a Dearborn-based political group.
“After extensive dialogue with both the Harris and Trump campaigns, we found no commitment to addressing the urgent concerns of our community, particularly the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon,” the group said in a statement last month.
“The need for a ceasefire remains paramount for Muslim and Arab American voters, yet neither campaign has offered a viable solution.”
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AMPAC added that it is backing Stein “based on her steadfast commitment to peace, justice, and a call for immediate ceasefires in conflict zones”.
With support for Stein on the rise in Michigan’s Arab and Muslim communities, where President Joe Biden won overwhelmingly in 2020, Democrats are noticing and pushing back.
Democrats target Stein
The Harris campaign released an advertisement aimed at Arab Americans in southeast Michigan that took a dig at third-party candidates.
In the commercial, Deputy Wayne County Executive Assad Turfe says Harris would help end the war in the Middle East as the camera zooms in on a cedar tree – Lebanon’s national symbol – hanging from his necklace.
Turfe warns voters in the video that Trump would bring more chaos and suffering if elected. “We also know a vote for a third party is a vote for Trump,” he says.
Stein’s supporters, however, categorically reject that argument.
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Palestinian comedian and activist Amer Zahr, who is running for a school board seat in Dearborn, argued that Democrats should be grateful that Stein is on the ballot and slammed the argument that a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump as “paternalistic”.
“It assumes that if Stein wasn’t there, we’d be out there voting for you,” Zahr told Al Jazeera.
“If it really were two parties and there were no other parties, I think most of the Arab Americans who are voting for Stein would vote for neither. And in fact, if there were really only two choices, a lot of the people who are voting for Stein right now out of anger for the Democratic Party might go for Trump.”
Zahr, who was on a shortlist of candidates that Stein considered for her vice presidential pick, also dismissed the argument that a vote for the Green Party would be “wasted” because it is unlikely to win.
“I mean news flash: Voters vote for people who speak to their issues,” he told Al Jazeera, praising Stein for standing up to Israel and running as an “openly anti-genocide” candidate.
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“Jill Stein, to me, is a noble vehicle to express our deep anger and the distrust and betrayal that we feel at the ballot box.”
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The Democratic National Committee (DNC) released a separate commercial last month also proclaiming that “a vote for Stein is really a vote for Trump”.
Stein has pushed back against that claim, slamming the Democrats’ attacks as a “fear campaign and smear campaign”.
She told Al Jazeera’s The Take podcast last week that the Democratic Party is coming after her instead of “addressing the issues like the genocide, which has lost Kamala Harris so many voters”.
‘I am sick of the two-party system’
While foreign policy may not be a top priority for the average US voter, numerous Arab and Muslim Americans interviewed by Al Jazeera over the past week said Israel’s assault on Lebanon and Gaza is their number one issue.
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And so, with both major-party presidential candidates voicing uncompromising support for Israel, some voters are looking to Stein to break away from the two parties and forge a new path.
“I am sick of the two-party system and their power play politics, where on both sides, they are unanimously agreeing on this bipartisan issue that they support Israel,” said Haneen Mahbuba, an Iraqi American voter.
With a keffiyeh-patterned scarf that says “Gaza” in Arabic around her neck, the bespectacled 30-year-old mother raised her voice in anger as she described the violence Israel is committing in Gaza and Lebanon with US support.
Mahbuba told Al Jazeera that she feels “empowered” by voting for Stein because she is not giving in to the “fearmongering” about the need to vote for the “lesser of two evils”. She added that it is Harris’s voters who are wasting their votes.
“They’re giving away their vote when they vote for the Democratic Party that has continuously dismissed us, disregarded us, silenced us and seen us as less important,” Mahbuba said.
‘Indistinguishable’
Stein ran for president in 2012, 2016 and 2020, but she failed to make a major impression on the elections.
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However, Stein’s Arab and Muslim supporters say this year, the Green Party can put a dent in the results to show the power of voters who prioritise Palestinian human rights.
Wissam Charafeddine, an activist in the Detroit area, said backing Stein is the right choice both morally and strategically.
“I’m the type of voter who believes that voting should be based on values and not politics. This is the core of democracy,” he said.
Charafeddine, who has voted for Stein in the past, added that Arab Americans are fortunate to be concentrated in a swing state where their votes are amplified.
“When we vote for Dr Jill Stein, we are not only voting [for] the right, moral platform that actually is most aligned with our values, interests, desires and priorities, but also it accounts for the Palestine vote and to the anti-genocide vote,” Charafeddine told Al Jazeera.
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Bottomline, advocates say the growing support for Stein shows that many Arab and Muslim voters have reached a tipping point with both the major parties’ support for Israel.
“Harris and Trump simply are indistinguishable to us because they passed a certain threshold that we cannot ever buy into the logic of lesser of two evils,” Abdel Salam told Al Jazeera.
“These are two genocidal parties, and we cannot put our hand with either of them.”
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
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