Bishop Garrison

Opinion contributor

The migrant caravan is not a threat.

This needs to be stated plainly and clearly, because President Donald Trump is working overtime to convince Americans of the opposite. Earlier this week, he tweeted that “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed” into the caravan, implying that those unknowns are terrorists. There is absolutely no evidence to this claim, and it has been contradicted by a senior counterterrorism official within his own administration.

Like many of the president’s falsehoods, the seed of this claim seems to be a Fox News segment. In this case, it was Fox and Friends co-host Pete Hegseth who referred to Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales' claim two weeks ago that his government had arrested and deported close to 100 people "linked to terrorists, with ISIS." The claim, Hegseth admitted, has not been verified. And Guatemala has already deported these supposed fighters, meaning they could not be part of the caravan.

In addition to talking about what the caravan isn’t, it’s important to recognize what it is. The approximately 7,000 migrants who are making their way north are looking to flee extreme violence, not perpetrate it. They are desperate to escape some of the most dangerous, impoverished living situations in the world.

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El Salvador has one of the world’s highest homicide rates, Honduras is the second poorest country in Central America, and almost half of the children in Guatemala under age 5 are malnourished. Many are running from gang violence in particular — the kind that threatens to drawn in and destroy their children.

Parents and children who are running for their lives are not an imminent threat to the United States of America, nor are they an army hell-bent on invasion. The last caravan, which Trump also baselessly insisted was a danger to our nation, dissipated to a fifth of its original size by the time it arrived at the southern border.

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Those who do decide to continue the rest of the more than 1,000-mile journey will seek asylum, which is legal under U.S. and international law. Our nation’s national security professionals will vet and assess their claims, because we have a system in place that allows us to stay safe while welcoming those who want to build a better life.

Still, the president proposes drastic solutions to his imaginary threats. He has floated two particularly chaos-inducing ideas: cutting off all development aid to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, and deploying the U.S. military to close the border. The first would remove the funding meant to alleviate the economic and security challenges that are causing migrants to flee northward. The second would be unprecedented in cost and scope, stretching our military thin when it should be facing down real challenges around the world.

Trump is lying to frighten voters

All of this would make the situation worse — and none of it would keep us safer.

We’ve been living with the national security implications of a president who doesn’t tell the truth for some time now. The damage that this president has done to the credibility of his office is approaching incalculable levels. Our public officials must tell the truth, because we need to be able to trust them in times of crisis. But Trump and his allies are far past the Boy Who Cried Wolf by now.

That’s why there is no room for equivocation or debate. The president is lying in order to frighten voters, and that is unacceptable. Our nation must be better than his xenophobic fear-mongering, and it is up to all of us to make it so.

Bishop Garrison is a U.S. Army veteran, former civil servant in the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security, and the Interim Executive Director of Truman National Security Project. Follow him on Twitter: @BishopGarrison