The Atlantic

Trump Keeps Invoking Terrorism to Get His Border Wall

His rhetoric diverges from that of previous post-9/11 administrations, which took care to not implicate all Muslims or all immigrants.
Source: Jorge Duenes / Reuters

Troops on the ground. Drones in the sky. Aggressive terror-related investigations in the United States. Donald Trump and Barack Obama differ significantly on style, but not much separates them when it comes to counterterrorism policy. Except, however, at least one issue: immigration.

The “migrant caravan” of Trump’s dark pre-midterm warnings has stopped short of the United States. Much of it now occupies a sprawling encampment of asylum seekers just over the border in Tijuana. Ahead of November’s congressional elections, the president repeatedly characterized the group as a national-security threat, at one point asserting the presence of “unknown Middle Easterners” that journalists on the ground could not corroborate.

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