Donald Trump has generated a lot of heat with the claim in his announcement that he was running for President that Mexico is "sending Rapists" to America. That story has been playing out for a week now, and the really truly horrible reality is that noone, except for perhaps Don Lemon - sorta -, has bothered to do any background on what Trump was talking about even when he specifically noted he was referring to an article in Fusion.
“If you go to Fusion, you will see a story: About 80% of the women coming in — you know who owns Fusion? Univision!” Trump told Lemon. “Go to Fusion and pick up the stories on rape. And it’s unbelievable when you look at what’s going on. So all I’m doing is telling the truth,” Trump told Lemon.
Ironically Trump is just telling the truth, kinda. That story does exist but it's not called "Rapists are coming from Mexico" in fact it's not about migrants leaving Mexico and entering the United States, it's about the price of sexual slavery that many women are forced to endure when they enter Mexico from Guatemala. The story title is "Is rape the price to pay for migrant women chasing the American Dream?" And it features video.YouTube Video
“Women and girl migrants, especially those without legal status traveling in remote areas or on trains, are at heightened risk of sexual violence at the hands of criminal gangs, people traffickers, other migrants or corrupt officials,” the 2010 Amnesty International report stated. “…Many criminal gangs appear to use sexual violence as part of the “price” demanded of migrants. According to some experts, the prevalence of rape is such that people smugglers may require women to have a contraceptive injection prior to the journey as a precaution…”
Continued over the flip.
Lemon replied that the press stories are about women being raped, but not about criminals coming across the border. "Well, somebody's doing the raping, Don! I mean somebody's doing it! Who's doing the raping? Who's doing the raping?" he asked.
Here's just one more reason why CNN is functionally useless. In their online report of the confrontation between Don Lemon and Trump - they didn't even bother to try to answer the question "Whose Doing the Raping?" as if that were some type of mystery, but it isn't - it's right there in the article.
Perpetrators can be coyotes, other migrants, bandits, or even government authorities. “We have active cases here of officials who’ve been detained and are facing criminal proceedings… for abusing the vulnerable migrant women specifically,” said Alejandro Vila, head of a special prosecutor’s office in Chiapas dedicated to investigating and prosecuting crimes against migrants. “We’ve seen that for woman crossing alone, the risk of becoming a crime victim increases significantly.” Sex is also seen as an economic exchange or form of payment; a physical “currency” for those women who lack the cash needed to pay bribes or “protection” fees on the journey north. ... That’s why the statistics for rape and sexual assault are so fuzzy. Almost all migrants crossing north don’t have permission to be in Mexico, so reporting a crime to the authorities means risking deportation. Other victims are ashamed to admit they’ve been brutalized.
This is occurring largely on Mexico's Southern border to women and girls who have entered Mexico illegally. There is rape, but it's not primarily being perpetrated by migrants, it's be perpetrated on the migrants by the human traffickers, and by corrupt government officials as payment of their allowing the migrants passage. The HuffingtonPost report is really just a re-report based on the Fusion Video and even they get it right.
Rape can be perpetrated by anyone along the way, including guides, fellow migrants, bandits or government officials, according to Fusion. Sometimes sex is used as a form of payment, when women and girls don’t have money to pay bribes. The assaults are so common that many women and girls take contraceptives beforehand as preventative measures.
This is nothing like what Trump described, not even close. If he actually read this article and the Huffpo article he totally failed to comprehend both of them. If Don Lemon read this and the Huffpo article which he claimed he did, why is it his only grudging response to Trump's "Whose doing the Raping" was ultimately... "yeah..."? I've only seen one Mediate article that notes how grossly wrong Trump misread this and other stories on the subject. Trump painted the migrants as the Rapists, and although Fusion does mention that happens in the video report it describes that some of those "migrants" are actually fakes - that they are actually local predators who disguise themselves as migrants in order to get closer to their targets. Those Guys Are Rapists, but the vast majority of these cases are really forced prostitution and sexual slavery.
In fact there is a huge prostitution industry operating through the local bars and restaurants - which are in reality brothels - in southern Mexico. This is actually a very serious subject. But it's not about crime being brought to America by undocumented migrants, it's about Poverty. Crushing Abject Poverty so deep that it drives women, girls and even young boys to Risk being sexually violated all for the possibility - just the possibility - that they might ultimately have a better life in America. If Trump had actually made this point, he wouldn't have been cut by Univision, or NBC. If he had made this point he might have been considered a hero for standing tall in defense of these women. But he didn't do that. And because he didn't do that he's now the hero of the GOP for "tough [dumb as a sack of rocks] stance" on immigration. They love this guy. Sorry, Jeb but he does speak of a majority of the GOP many of whom have the same failure to comprehend Climate Change, the fact that allowing someone else Freedom and Liberty doesn't take any thing away from someone else's Liberty, and that there are no "Death Panels" in Obamacare, or the fact that the rate of illegal immigration has been on the decline during Obama's Presidency after it peaked in 2007. Since then the rate of net migration has been functionally Zero.
It's not so much that his comments are blatantly racist, which they are, it's that he's blatantly misconstrued what's going on and shown completely warped judgement. A person like this can't be trusted to make read a report on national defense and national security and not misinterpret it horribly thereby placing the nation in a terrible and potentially deadly situation. That can't be allowed to happen. It's not [just] the bigotry, it's the inability to accurately comprehend the facts due to his enormous arrogant ignorance. And, sadly, he's a long way from the only one.
Vyan