Trump has been using anti-immigrant sentiment as he campaigns for 2020

A USA TODAY analysis of his campaign's Facebook ads found more than 2,000 ads along those lines

Since January, President Trump and his re-election campaign have flooded social media with warnings that the U.S. was under “invasion” by immigrants coming through the southern border.

According to Facebook political advertising data analyzed by USA TODAY, Trump’s campaign funded the publication of more than 2,000 political ads like this:

“We have an INVASION! So we are BUILDING THE WALL to STOP IT. Dems will sue us. But we want a SAFE COUNTRY! It’s CRITICAL that we STOP THE INVASION.”

The sentiment, which Trump has been using to solidify support with his base, was echoed by the El Paso shooter, whose alleged manifesto declared in its second sentence that the attack “is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

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As the President addressed a nation mourning after two horrific shootings over a single weekend that left 31 people dead, he condemned the ideology of white supremacy that is believed to have driven one of the gunmen.

“The shooter in El Paso posted a manifesto online consumed by racist hate,” Trump said Monday. “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy.”

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Heidi Beirich, an expert on extremism who tracks white supremacist, nativist and neo-Confederate movements at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said use of the term "invader" to describe non-white immigrants is common among white supremacists, who believe such immigration is leading to white genocide.

“It's the ultimate demonizing term you can use,” she said. “You call someone an invader, it means they shouldn't be here and you might have to use force to get them out.”

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The Trump campaign’s Facebook advertisements referring to an “invasion” were initially published in January and February this year. Facebook data does not show precisely when the ads stopped appearing.

While many of them were targeted toward Texas and other border states, it is unknown whether the shooter in the El Paso attack was among those who viewed the ads.

Nathan Kalmoe, an assistant professor of political communication at Louisiana State University, said social media messages allow those purchasing the ads to target particular demographic groups.

“Posts that evoke anger — like those using ‘invasion’ rhetoric — are more likely to be shared, which expands the influence further,” he said. “Not all of those people will be as amenable to the shared message, but they would be more amenable than the average person because of homophily in social networks.”

Kalmoe, who has researched political rhetoric and violence, said Trump's language about immigrants “legitimizes and spreads the dehumanizing rhetoric of white supremacists.”

“What used to be fringe sentiments whispered behind closed doors or spoken with coded language is now openly expressed at the highest levels of government,” he said.

The rhetoric warning of an “invasion” has not been limited to ads for Trump’s political campaign. He has also used social media to spread the language himself. At least six different tweets posted by Trump between October 2018 and June 2019 use the word “invasion” to refer to migrants coming to the southern border with Mexico.

“This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!” he wrote in an October 2018 tweet.

Trump's immigration rhetoric in recent months has included claims about crime in El Paso.

Trump, in his February State of the Union address, said until recent border barrier construction El Paso "used to have extremely high rates of violent crime--one of the highest in the country, and considered one of our nation's most dangerous cities." The statement is not supported by FBI crime data, which shows El Paso's crime rate has been significantly lower than similarly sized cities since at least the 1980s.

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Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor at New York University, said the rhetoric referring to an invasion of immigrants and foreigners has been used by political leaders in the past to create a sense that there is a national emergency, after which “the leader can pose himself as the savior of the nation.”

“They legitimize this hate speech and encourage people to say publicly what they might've only said privately before,” she said. “And so they legitimate the expression of hatred, which very often passes to actions.”

In his address to the nation Monday, Trump’s rhetoric took a sharp departure from the language the social media posts he and his political campaign have published. He urged the nation to seek bipartisan solutions and “honor the sacred memory of those we have lost by acting as one people.”

“Open wounds cannot heal,” Trump said, “if we are divided.”