The New York Times reports that a pro-Trump super PAC, Right for America, spent $6.7 million on a 30-second horror-film-style advertisement in Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania over the last few days; it’s been running for about three weeks in swing states. “The spot begins with a flickering television screen and cuts to a mug shot of a man with different colored eyes,” writes Times reporter Theodore Schleifer. “Spooky music, reminiscent of a horror film soundtrack, plays as the narrator recites statistics about crimes committed by migrants. The ad cuts to shots of the interior of a dark house, a child sleeping in bed, and, outside, the silhouette of a man approaching with what may be a crowbar in his hand.” The rest of the spot includes splattered blood, women in homes alone, and a soundtrack of news stories about violence read by TV anchors, peppered by mug shots, images of men who appear to be Hispanic. A voiceover says: “Under Kamala Harris, over 13,000 illegals convicted of murder are living in American communities. Which means they are here, while an additional 15,000 convicted of sexual assault and rape are also living amongst you.”
The New York Times’ factcheck: The 13,000 number comes from data released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which said that there were 13,000 migrants who had been convicted of homicide who were “non-detained.” But that does not mean they are living freely in American communities, only that they are not in the custody of that particular agency. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security previously told The New York Times that many of them were in the custody of other agencies at the local, state or federal level. The same is true about the 15,000 people convicted of sexual assault. Moreover, these people did not all come into the United States during the Biden-Harris administration; they came over the past 40 years or more.
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