“The reason why the caravan has resonated so much on the right is because it is the literal, physical representation of what Republicans don’t want to see happening at the border,” said Andy Surabian, a former aide to the Trump presidential campaign and White House. “I can’t imagine a clearer picture to be painted to illustrate this issue to Trump voters.”



With the kind of dark language usually reserved for true catastrophes like the Sept. 11 attacks, conservative commentators and politicians have led a concerted push to elevate the caravan as an issue. They have called it “an invasion,” “a national emergency,” “an illegal alien mob,” “an attack on America” and a crisis with implications that are “critical to the future of our civilization.”

These outcries, which have included unfounded claims about the caravan’s origins and wildly fluctuating estimates of its size, are playing out in a clear pattern. They often start with right-wing commentators, conspiracy theorists and activist groups with large followings; their talk then breaks through more broadly on Fox News, Breitbart News and other outlets that are popular with conservative voters; and ultimately Mr. Trump tweets or remarks about them, acting as an amplifier and a validator.

Apart from concerns of domestic terrorism, any number of threats, foreign and domestic, have been simmering in the weeks leading to the election, like the killing of a Washington Post columnist inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, though none of them have received as much attention from the president and his allies as the migrant caravan.

Even a massacre of fellow Americans lacks the singular power of illegal immigration as a galvanizing factor for some fervent Trump supporters. And no immigration issue is as vividly captured as the caravan — in images and videos broadcast repeatedly and shared widely on social media, some of them misleading or unproven, that show thousands of Latin Americans making their way toward the United States. The president has shared some of these mislabeled images himself.