I'm Steven Potter. >> It's clear immigration is the
hot button issue for Republicans, as Donald Trump has
proposed increasingly drastic plans to deport undocumented
migrants. Kamala Harris has proposed reviving a bipartisan
border bill, which would add more immigration officers and
judges. The question is which plan are voters drawn to? Here
and now? Reporter Nathan Denzin has more.
>> Please rise for our national anthem. Republicans are ramping
up attacks on Democratic immigration policies as Election
Day draws closer. >> If you think about it, only a
mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to
our country. Anybody would know this.
>> Over 8.5 million people have been encountered at the southern
border since 2021, about 6 million more than during the
Trump administration. Republicans say those immigrants
are taking jobs, committing crime and bringing illicit drugs
into the country. A point Trump underscored at a campaign stop
in Prairie du Chien. >> They make our criminals look
like babies. These are stone cold killers. They walk into
your kitchen, they'll cut your throat. These people are
animals. Now they'll say, oh, that's a terrible thing for him
to say. No, no, these people are animals.
Not only to people at the border, but to immigrants that
are already here. >> Representative Chris Sinicki
represents South Milwaukee in the state Assembly, and is also
the party chair for the Milwaukee County Democrats.
>> When I watch the news and I see these families, these these
mothers with their children walking hundreds of miles to get
to the border, they're doing it for a reason.
>> The lives of people in many countries, like Venezuela,
Nicaragua. Their lives have become almost intolerable.
>> Benjamin Marquez is a political scientist at
UW-Madison with a focus on immigration and Latino
populations. has always reacted very
negatively to large numbers of immigrants coming to the United
States. point now where you're walking
down the street and you see people say, oh, you know, he's
got brown skin. I don't trust this man.
color. The threat is seen as as more intense, as more
consequential for the for the fate of the nation.
>> That became particularly clear when Donald Trump falsely
claimed Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield,
Ohio, during the presidential debate.
the people that live there. >> Even though these accusations
have no basis in fact, it it it flies politically.
hear directly from American citizens about the concerns that
they might have. Not whether it's true or not.
>> Hilario Deleon is the party chair for the Milwaukee County
Republicans. He says concerns over immigration come up
frequently when he is out in the community.
people are just making up or they're just, you know what? I'm
just going to roll out of bed and I'm going to just go out
there and just blast this entire group of people that are coming
in. >> Polls have shown that
Republicans are likely to be much more concerned about
immigration than Democrats. Deleon says he's heard concerns
in Milwaukee that undocumented people are receiving help before
local neighborhoods. >> These are people who live in
these neighborhoods that feel like that they're being
forgotten. They feel like that their voices aren't being heard
and they're being pushed aside. >> He says concerns include
illegal drugs like fentanyl coming in through the southern
border and undocumented people committing crime. But data has
shown that most smuggled drugs, including fentanyl, are brought
by American citizens through official ports of entry in their
vehicles versus by migrants crossing the border.
Undocumented migrants are also much less likely to commit crime
or end up in jail than natural U.S. Citizens.
>> They are not going to go out and commit serious crimes
because they are hoping to become legal citizens. If they
commit these serious crimes, they cannot become a citizen of
the United States. >> We're already dealing with
enough crime as it is with the general population. A general
citizen population here. Why would we want to add more crime
onto that problem already? >> The Trump plan, if elected,
hinges on a policy of mass deportation for the roughly 11
million undocumented migrants in America, the largest deportation
operation in the history of our country.
>> I don't think many people have given serious thought to
what it would take to deport 11 million people.
deported, Marquez says. Industries around the country
would be hurt. >> I mean, who's going to
process meat in this country? Who's who's going to work the
dairy farms? >> Studies have found that
immigrants often make up more than three quarters of labor on
dairy farms. the jobs that most people don't
want to do. They're they're working in the fields. They're
working in the kitchens, they're cleaning, you know, cleaning up
manure. >> There's all these American
citizens here that could use a job.
farm. I wouldn't I wouldn't last a couple days.
>> Odrcic Dav. Rohn Odrcic is an immigration attorney who works
on asylum cases. He says Republican rhetoric has been an
issue for some time. >> I'm seeing on one side this
intense hate. I don't know how else to put it.
>> But he also says he hasn't seen much action taken by
Democrats. electoral lens of we need to get
people excited. administration rule that would
allow noncitizen spouses and children to stay in America.
That policy was implemented in late August.
>> My question is to the Democrats is why did you enact
this in the summer of an election year? Why wasn't this
enacted within the first week of your administration?
>> He says there's a fundamental misunderstanding about how our
border and asylum process work, which leads to unproductive
political debates. truly realize that, that how
difficult it is to be granted asylum in order to be granted
asylum, you have to prove to a judge your situation fits a very
narrow definition of why you country.
>> In the interim, federal law allows asylum seekers a
temporary status to remain in the U.S. But even scheduling an
appointment with a judge takes years.
>> Earlier this week, I was at the Chicago Asylum office for an
interview. That application was filed in April of 2016, so eight
and a half years in January. >> A bipartisan border bill
proposed adding 4300 asylum officers and 100 immigration
judges to ease waits. But Trump came out in opposition to the
bill and it was never passed into law.
for that bill. It was so bad. >> The problem is that you're
looking at the numbers versus the resources that aren't
keeping up with the demand. >> On her campaign website, Vice
President Kamala Harris says she would bring back this bill if
elected. She also recently signaled support for keeping
even tougher asylum laws enacted by President Biden in June.
Since then, encounters have decreased by about 55%.
>> Democrats cannot afford to be branded as advocating an open
border. Just come on in and you're and you're and you're
home free. >> Only time will tell which
plan voters prefer and if the plan voters prefer and if the