Takeaways From the Republican Convention’s Message on Immigration

If the rhetoric on immigration at this week’s G.O.P. convention matches former President Donald J. Trump’s vision of isolationism, it has also grown darker and more conspiratorial.

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The Republican Party’s approach to immigration policy at the southern border has come to match former President Donald J. Trump’s hard-line rhetoric.

Former President Donald J. Trump and Republicans are in lock step on the issue of immigration, further evidence that he has cemented his grip on the party during his third run for the White House

At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week, the rhetoric and the party platform match his vision of isolationism and border security, and his suspicion of the people crossing the 2,000-mile line dividing Mexico and the United States, as they have since his first run for president in 2016. But the broadsides have become darker and the language more conspiratorial.

Here are four immigration takeaways from the convention.

Trump’s conspiracies about immigrants and illegal voting have become widespread among Republicans.

In panels and speeches at the convention, falsehoods about noncitizens’ voting have become more pervasive and central to Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

Mark Morgan, a former top Trump immigration official, claimed without evidence that Democrats were encouraging illegal immigration for political reasons, in order to bring more people into their party. Kari Lake, a Trump acolyte and Republican nominee for Senate in Arizona, falsely accused her Democratic opponent of voting “to let the millions of people who poured into our country illegally cast a ballot in this upcoming election.”

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said Democrats “wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children.” Senator Rick Scott of Florida recalled a nightmare, he said, in which “Biden and the Democrats flew so many illegals” into the United States that it “was easy for Democrats to rig the elections.”

Voter fraud is extraordinarily rare, and allegations that widespread numbers of undocumented immigrants are unlawfully voting have been consistently discredited. But Mr. Trump’s false claim, which is being used to disenfranchise Americans, has almost universally been adopted by his party.

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