In September 2024, Donald J. Trump and JD Vance started a rumor that Haitian migrants were eating dogs and cats off the street in Springfield, Ohio. Trump even went so far as to mention the rumor during the ABC Presidential Debate. The unfounded claims created a frenzy online and his supporters even believed it.  

In recent months, there has been a palpable fear with Trump’s crackdowns on immigration. Beginning his second presidential term on Jan. 20, Trump declared that he would take several actions to block migrants from entering the U.S., starting with a mass deportation plan. His actions have sparked both a fear within the migrant community and a belief from his supporters that the crackdowns occurring at the border are helping the country. However, how based in reality are Trump’s claims? 

President Trump is spreading a narrative that the amount of migrants coming to the U.S. is uncontrollable, which, according to San Francisco State University Latino/Latina studies professor Teresa Carrillo, couldn’t be further from the truth. 

“That is a total manipulation of the perception of people on the border and of the border and border crossings,” Carrillo said. “So if you look at numbers of people crossing the border right now, they’re low, yet the other day, the Trump administration declared an emergency at the border. So that does not match the facts.”

Carrillo also mentioned that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) tallies the number of migrants entering the country by the raw number of apprehensions, meaning how many times the person has attempted to cross the border (the average is three times). According to Carillo, in CBP’s statistics, one person counts for three people. This is a strategy used to inflate numbers and to justify the expansion of border control and bigger budgets.

The research indeed shows that the number of migrants crossing the border is decreasing. So why is there a widespread narrative that migrants are entering the country at an alarming rate?

These narratives are simply fueled by racism. Trump has somehow turned the act of migration into a political talking point, condemning it and the people who migrate. However, the threat of deportation is a serious reality and is a grave issue, specifically in the Latine community. Entire families’ lives are changed with one knock at the door. 

But this narrative did not just start during Trump’s presidency, it has been a persisting trend in U.S. history.

Since the literal beginning of time, people have migrated. In recent U.S. history, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which fundamentally changed U.S. immigration policy. Johnson removed discrimination acts, like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, allowed migration from non-European countries in Asia and Latin America, and created a preference system for migrants who had family members living in the U.S. or were highly skilled. 

SFSU political science professor Ron Hayduk cites the 1965 act as the beginning of immigration reform in the United States. 

“Prior to that, we had remarkably restrictive laws that came into being in the 1920s and really anti-Western European immigrant laws,” Hayduk said. “It was really quite racist in the sense of limiting who could come to mostly Europeans and mostly Northern and Western Europeans, not even Southern and Eastern Europeans, where my ancestors are from.”

The Immigration and Nationality Act, along with the Bracero Program, increased the flow of migrants from Latin America, specifically Mexico. According to a 2012 article, the population of Latin American migrants was near zero in 1965, while in 2008, there was a peak of around 9.6 million.

“You get this picture that everybody who’s Latino and a migrant is undocumented and it’s actually only 12% of the Latino population that’s undocumented,” Carrillo said. “From Mexico, about 35% of the foreign born are naturalized. And another 32% have legal permanent residence or some other form of documented presence.”

With this large number of Latin American migrants now residing in the U.S., we have to get to work. Latine migrants made up 47.6% of the migrant workforce in 2023. 

Latine migrants contribute to a plethora of sectors in the U.S., including construction, restaurant business, agricultural industries and the housing industry.

Carrillo said that migrants positively affect the economy, and stopping the flow of migrants negatively affects the economy.

“For one, any economic evaluation of the contribution of immigrants consistently shows that more immigrants, more economic growth and more prosperity,” Carillo said. “There’s not a single economic study that would contradict that.”

However, these racist narratives fueled by our governments paint us the picture that immigration is a negative thing and must be stopped. In 2006, several organizations across the U.S. hosted a one-day protest “Day Without Immigrants” to show that when migrants stop working, shopping and contributing to the country, there are real effects. 

Hayduk cites this protest as having shifted the narrative of immigration — migrants and their labor were seen as necessary for the well-being of the country. 

Currently, several Latine organizations are urging people to stop buying from companies that don’t support Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs and to stop working, if possible. This movement is known as the Latino Freeze. On Feb. 3, organizers planned for another national “Day Without Immigrants” protest.

Carrillo, who is teaching a section of LTNS 470 (Latina/o Immigration to the U.S.) in the Spring 2025 semester, urges her students to think critically about media relating to migrants and their own migration history, often prompting an interest in digging into and dissecting the narratives we’re told about migrants. 

“On all fronts, there’s misinformation about migrants,” Carrillo said. “And if in class we deconstruct every myth, we’re gonna spend all our time saying, ‘this isn’t true, this isn’t true,’ but we’re not gonna have time to cover the material that gives a more well-grounded basis of our true immigrant history.”

So yes, migration is a necessary part of a country’s well-being. But even these positive contributions aren’t justification for migrant existence in the U.S. Migrants are simply human beings. We are no different from each other based on the past experiences we’ve had or our legal status. And although migrants, especially migrants from Latin America, are great contributors to the economy, agriculture, construction, restaurant business, etc., they deserve to exist and stay in this country regardless of their positive contributions. 

“I think there’s a real debate happening, and it’s a political debate, and it’s being fought out in all kinds of ways that are not just, you know, polite debate and disagreement, but actual physical and substantive conflict that has tremendous impacts on millions of people,” said Hayduk. “So I think it’s an important time to ask these questions about what’s the nature of this project and what should that look like and how do we want to deliver on the promise of America as a land of opportunity and equality and justice for all.”