Skip to content
Screen Shot 2018-05-30 at 7.03.46 AM

Cagle and Kemp vie to continue Trump’s immigration legacy in Ga.

Trump’s immigration policies are so impossibly cruel, journalists are saying that the cruelty itself is meant to scare people out of coming to the United States.

Under Trump, United States immigration policy has become increasingly inhumane, breaking up families and sending children and parents to separate detention facilities at growing rates.

Nearly 1,500 children who arrived at the borders without an adult are missing probably because their U.S. sponsors are choosing not to keep in touch with the United States government for fear of deportation.

While Trump is thinking up cruel and unusual ways to torture the children and adults seeking refuge at our borders, Cagle and Kemp are trying to outdo him here in Georgia.

In one of Kemp’s election videos, he advertises his willingness to help the deportation efforts. “I got a big truck,” he says, climbing into a pickup, “just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take ’em home myself.” He then adds with a smirk: “Yep, I just said that.”

The two grossest things about this video have to be the labeling of every undocumented citizen as a “criminal illegal,” which Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently announced they will be considered, and Kemp’s smirk when he shows how gladly he’ll partake in the deportation proceedings, as if separating families is something to laugh about.

Kemp deliberately uses language in this video to manipulate viewers into seeing immigrants as “criminals” and deportation, which results in death and mistreatment, as “taking them home,” when in reality, the U.S. may be the only home they’ve ever known. He also contributes to the dehumanization of immigrants, if he, just a civilian (not an ICE agent) can just “pick them up and throw them in his truck” and drive them over the border without any proceedings.

In Cagle’s anti-immigration video, he brags about leading the “fight for one of the biggest crackdowns on illegal immigration that outlawed and defunded sanctuary cities.” Although Cagle is in a suit, walking around a detention facility, not threatening to throw innocent immigrants into his truck, what he says might be scarier.

Cagle isn’t offering to do anything outside the boundaries of the law and he’s promising to do continue to make policies that harm immigrants, which he has already done. He also plays into the “dangerous immigrant” stereotypes, saying that “sanctuary cities…make it possible for them to terrorize us on our streets.”

Either conservative option for governor will continue Trump’s inhumane immigration stances and policies in Georgia. We need progressive leadership in Georgia to ensure that all human beings to be treated with the rights they deserve.

Share this post