Trump's new immigration ad was panned as racist. Turns out it was also based on a falsehood. - Hartford Courant Trump's new immigration ad was panned as racist. Turns out it was also based on a falsehood.
Trump's new immigration ad was panned as racist. Turns out it was also based on a falsehood.
The expletive-filled advertisement President Donald Trump released this week, seemingly to raise fears about immigration in advance of the midterm elections, was widely denounced, with Democrats and even some Republicans criticizing it as racist.
But, beyond the outrage, the ad was also reportedly based on a falsehood.
The 53-second video focuses on the courtroom behavior of Luis Bracamontes, an undocumented immigrant who was convicted of killing two sheriff's deputies in California in 2014 and bragged about it during the trial.
"Democrats let him into our country," the ad's script reads. "Democrats let him stay."
Just one problem: It doesn't appear to be true.
Bracamontes, who had been deported multiple times before his crime spree, last entered the country while George W. Bush was president, sometime between May 2001 and February 2002, when there is a record for his marriage in Arizona, according to the Sacramento Bee.
He lived near Salt Lake City until 2014, when a methamphetamine-fueled road trip ended with the murder of the two Sacramento-area deputies, according to the Bee.
The ad also failed to mention that in 1998 he was arrested on drug charges in Phoenix, then released by the office of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio "for reasons unknown," the Bee reported.
Arpaio, a close Trump ally who has made waves for his hard-line immigration policies and rhetoric, was convicted in 2017 for ignoring a federal judge's order to stop detaining people on the suspicion of being undocumented immigrants. He was later pardoned by Trump.
The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Bracamontes had been deported under both Democratic and Republican presidencies.
He was first arrested on charges related to marijuana possession in Phoenix in 1996 and sentenced to four months in jail, the Bee reported. He served his time and was deported in 1997, when Bill Clinton was president, only to be deported again in 2001 soon after being arrested on marijuana charges, according to the Bee.
Bracamontes has been sentenced to the death penalty in the murder case.