Trump’s messaging on immigration is littered with misinformation. But it’s taking hold in Pennsylvania

DALLAS, Pa. — Boyd Sweinberg lives in a small town of about 2,000 people that is 94% white, but like many supporters of former President Donald Trump, he believes illegal immigration is a drain on the broader economy that could diminish his life in Harvey Lake.

“We’ve gotta send them back where they came from,” Sweinberg, a 63-year-old government employee, said at the Luzerne County fair last month. “We know they’re here. We just haven’t seen ‘em yet.”

He ranks illegal immigration as his No. 1 issue, and echoes messaging that Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have made a centerpiece of their campaign as they crisscross Pennsylvania in the election’s waning days.

Pennsylvania voters favor Trump on immigration over Vice President Kamala Harris by 9 percentage points. Interviews with voters here show how in towns across the state, from the affluent Philadelphia suburbs to the Rust Belt, the issue remains a potent political force eight years into Trumpism.

And the Trump campaign’s often-incendiary focus on illegal immigration is reverberating from county council meetings to Haitian solidarity rallies and campaign events, as immigrants and nonimmigrants express fears of the inflammatory rhetoric, and as Trump’s supporters rally around the cause.

“Her border policies welcomed 25 million illegal aliens into this country,” Vance said last weekend, referring to Harris. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 7.1 immigrants entered the U.S. between 2021 and 2023, including legal and undocumented immigrants. “People who shouldn’t be here, people who are competing against you and your children to buy the homes that ought by right go to American citizens.”

The 2024 Trump playbook looks a lot like 2016′s

Trump’s best opportunity to win the presidency is to win Pennsylvania. And his strategy has increasingly drawn from th e formula that got him elected eight years ago: using fears of illegal immigration to motivate voters. His 2016 refrain of “build the wall” turned to false claims of noncitizens voting en masse, and made-up tales of Haitian immigrants eating household pets.

Trump is particularly targeting lower-information and less politically engaged voters who believe the issue is linked to their economic outlook or opportunity for advancement. More than the economy, in Pennsylvania Trump’s strongest issue is immigration.

“It is a very clear strategy and a strategy that’s rooted in the fact that this has been successful not just in American politics in recent history,” said Jasmine Rivera, executive director of the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition. “It is a strategy that has been successful in many, many, many countries for over 150 years. … This is not new. This is to be expected.”

There’s a direct correlation between voters who feel passionate about immigration and who support Trump. When voters are asked broadly what the most important issue facing the state is right now, just 3% say immigration, but when they are asked what’s motivating their personal vote, Trump supporters cite immigration as their second most important concern, behind the economy.

“Mostly I love his ideas for immigration,” said Nancy Burkland, a nurse from Luzerne County, who was an independent until Trump ran. Now she’s a super-fan. “… He wants to deport the illegals and stop them from getting any benefits that, you know, our taxpayers are paying for.”

Illegal crossings of the Mexican border hit an all-time high of 2.2 million in 2022 during President Joe Biden and Harris’ administration. But the impact on the economy, public safety, or schools is hard to measure.

There is little nonpartisan research on the topic. A report by the GOP-controlled U.S. House found that “illegal aliens” in Pennsylvania had cost taxpayers more than $1 billion in 2023. Statewide, the American Immigration Council, which advocates on behalf of immigrants, found that immigrants in Pennsylvania, including undocumented and legal residents, paid $13.1 billion in taxes 2022 and additionally had $34.2 billion in spending power.

The council and the GOP report cited different numbers for overall undocumented immigration, but the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates 153,000 undocumented immigrants reside in Pennsylvania, about 100,000 fewer than the GOP report estimated.

How Trump and Vance’s messaging has resonated in Pa.

Trump and Vance have promised mass deportations, without details on how they might roll out, and claimed towns like Springfield, Ohio are suffering from a “hostile takeover” by immigrants. The GOP governor of the state called the characterizations false and harmful. Despite criticism, Vance was defiant in Leesport last weekend. He has said he will continue to refer to migrants here legally as illegal because he thinks they have been granted amnesty too broadly.

“At this very moment, the Democrats are busy calling anybody who disagrees with Kamala Harris’ open border a racist,” Vance said last weekend. “In the small town of Springfield, Ohio, or here in Pennsylvania, there have been cities, small towns, that have been overwhelmed with migrants who are brought in by Kamala Harris. … And so our message to Kamala Harris and the Democrats is: We’re gonna keep on complaining about your policies, because this is America and we have the right to speak our mind.”

The messaging is taking hold. Moments before Vance took the stage in Leesport, 25-year-old Casey Carpenter previewed his remarks as she explained why she’s voting for the GOP ticket.

“The immigrants coming in and taking all the housing from our veterans, that’s a huge one,” said Carpenter, a marketing representative from Berks County, who purchased her first home in 2021.

There is a housing crisis across the country, but there is no evidence that veterans are being kicked out of their homes to make way for immigrants. The oft-repeated claim seems to stem from an incident in which a nonprofit group made up a story about homeless veterans being evicted from a hotel in New York to make room for migrants.

Carpenter dismissed articles that disproved the story. “I like to watch more independent news on YouTube, people that go on the streets,” she said.

Some Trump supporters across the state also claim with little evidence that illegal immigration is causing an uptick in crime.

“A Harris administration leaves the border wide open with drug mules flooding in and families threatened,” said Lisa Scheller, a coffee shop owner and former GOP congressional candidate in the Lehigh Valley, who spoke before Vance at his rally.

Trump’s campaign is running ads highlighting horrific cases of immigrants committing murder or rape. But research shows that immigrants are not more likely to commit crimes than anyone else.

Just outside Philadelphia, Delaware County residents have spent months flooding county council meetings to insist in increasingly combative public comment sessions that local officials are secretly busing in undocumented immigrants.

That fear has become a lightning rod for everything right-wing residents don’t like about the Democratic-controlled county council. They insisted a proposal for a mental health facility in a county park was actually for migrants, and tax increases, some claim, are designed to replace existing residents with immigrants in low-income housing.

Similar stories echo across the state. Often people who have fallen on harder economic times are most susceptible to an idea that the odds favor immigrants.

“They’ve been able to other these folks and convince these voters, someone’s getting something for free and you’re not getting it,” said Tim Kelly, a historian and professor at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Westmoreland County.

Here in Luzerne County, Barbara Ruger, 75, fell behind on mortgage payments a year ago and lost the home she shared with her daughter. They were living in an encampment near Kingston before a shelter placed them in a house in Nanticoke. Ruger makes a connection between their struggle and illegal immigration.

“The thing that really frosted me was they’re giving houses to all the illegals for free,” Ruger said, although immigrants are not actually being given houses. “When we lived in the tents, a lot of those homeless were veterans down there.”

Harris triangulates as Democrats push back

After Trump repeated false claims that Haitian migrants were eating pets in Springfield, Harris denounced his words as dangerous.

“You cannot be entrusted with standing behind the seal of the president of the United States of America, engaging in that hateful rhetoric that, as usual, is designed to divide us as a country, is designed to have people pointing fingers at each other,” Harris said in an interview earlier this month at WHYY in Philadelphia. “It’s designed to do that.”

As she has gained momentum, she has shifted her tone on immigration, a sign she worries that Trump’s barrage of attacks against her could not only motivate his base but also weaken her support. She has revamped her campaign website on the issue and pledged to pass a bipartisan immigration bill that would pump millions into securing the border.

“I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system,” she also said to applause in her Democratic National Convention speech. “We can create an earned pathway to citizenship — and secure our border.”

Harris’ tougher talk on immigration has frustrated advocates who see her trying to have it both ways. But on the whole, she has faced very little opposition from the progressive wing of her party.

“If you are not white, and if you’re not Republican, you don’t stand a chance with him,” said Ana Gallardo, a Harris supporter from Pottstown who attended a rally by Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, to mark the start of Hispanic American Heritage month. Gallardo is Puerto Rican but said she worries daily about friends of hers from Nicaragua and Honduras who are undocumented.

“With Kamala Harris, there will be a little less fear,” Gallardo said.

Rosa Velesquez, a 66-year-old Harris supporter from Peru, is a U.S. citizen who has worked all of the last 40 years she has lived in the country, primarily in warehouses in the Lehigh Valley. “We don’t come here to steal anybody’s job,” Velesquez said. “We don’t come here to take anything from nobody.”

At a rally to support Haitian immigrants in Philadelphia last month, the Rev. Christopher Neilson, a Jamaican immigrant, called the vilification of Haitian migrants “undeserved.”

“It is not true. It is subversive. It is destructive. It is divisive,” he said.

Ketty Pointe-Jour, the Haitian community liaison for the New Sanctuary Movement, whose parents immigrated 70 years ago to flee the Duvalier regime, said Trump’s attacks are mobilizing communities. “It’s causing us to move forward,” he said. “We’re not going backward.”

As the sun started to set at the Luzerne County fair last month, Conrad Klem sat with his wife, Marilyn, eating apple dumplings. The retired barber voted Republican before Trump, whom he said he can’t stand. Asked why, he said immigration.

“I just don’t understand all this focus on it,” Klem said. “We need the people to work. Most of them people are all good, decent people who want a better life.”