Michael Williams’s tour around the state targeting ‘illegals’ is just a stunt, but it sends a clear anti-immigration message to voters

Bus tours have become a staple of the American political campaign, but one candidate for governor in the state of Georgia, Michael Williams, wants you to know that his is different: “It’s not going to be one of those pansy political bus tours.”

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In a video released on Wednesday, emerging from a grey, prison corrections-style vehicle, the self-proclaimed “fearless conservative” Williams said he planned to “fill this bus with illegals and send them back to where they came from”. The video coincided with a campaign tour beginning on Wednesday to a handful of Georgia so-called sanctuary cities, which limit their cooperation with the federal government’s efforts to enforce immigration law.

On the bus’s rear it reads: “Murderers, rapists, kidnappers, child molestors [sic] and other criminals on board.” Just below, the lettering adds: “Follow me to Mexico.”

He’s dubbed it the Deportation Bus Tour, but the easy conflation Williams makes between the undocumented people in the US he calls “illegals” and violent crime is unsupported by the facts. Multiple studies have shown that immigrants commit less crime than native-born Americans on balance.

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The stunt was just the latest escalation in a Republican primary contest for the gubernatorial race, where anti-immigrant rhetoric, specifically that targeting Hispanic residents, has been a featured and enduring trope. Williams’ “deportation bus” is effectively just a one-up of fellow challenger Brian Kemp’s campaign ad last week in which he boasted: “I’ve got a big truck in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take them home myself.”

Azadeh Shahshahani, the Legal and Advocacy Director of the Georgia-based civil rights advocacy organization Project South, said the focus “is not unusual in Georgia at all. It is something we’ve seen year after year”.

But the talk has undoubtedly become cruder and more crass as insulting notions of “political correctness” have become a virtue in conservative circles. “The standard has been lowered so much in this election that it’s truly horrifying,” she added.

The frontrunner and current lieutenant governor, Casey Cagle, hasn’t been as theatrical as Kemp or Williams, but has pushed a hard line on the issue from his office and on the campaign trail too. In campaign ads he’s described himself as “Leading The Fight Against Illegal Immigration In Georgia” and he has also pushed hard against so-called sanctuary cities in the state – municipalities which do not allow local law enforcement to collaborate with immigration officials in order to deport undocumented people in their custody.

The difference between Williams’s bombast and Cagle’s, by comparison, muted anti-immigrant sentiment is mostly academic for Aline Mello. She is a 29-year-old local Dreamer, or recipient of the Daca program, which protects eligible undocumented youth from the threat of deportation but was ordered scrapped by Donald Trump last year and is a huge part of the agonised, ongoing national immigration debate.

“People already hate us. So what, now you’re just hating us in a funnier way? That doesn’t really change anything,” she said.

Mello came to the US from Brazil when she was seven years old, and her parents worked jobs cleaning homes and delivering car parts to give Mello and her sister the possibility of a better life. Like most Daca recipients, the US is the only country she’s ever properly known, but ever since Trump made immigrants into a campaign heel for his “America First” platform, she’s been feeling more and more under siege in her home.

Rachel Stanley (@rachel_r_stan) Looks like @williamsforga didn’t like the reception he received in @CityofClarkston #gapol #atlpol #gagov pic.twitter.com/PV8mkLbMXT

“During the presidential campaign I had to start taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication,” Mello said. “And since then I’ve had to up my dosage several times,” in response to the barrages of vitriol and the uncertainty that followed when Trump rescinded the Daca program that gave her legal status in the country. Trump’s decision has since been reversed by three separate courts and legal wrangling is ongoing.

The same day Williams set off on his deportation bus tour, Trump was in California for a roundtable discussion on the state’s sanctuary provisions for undocumented people. “We’re taking people out of the country – you wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals,” he said of deportees.

Williams has admitted that his bus tour isn’t actually planning to round anyone up, nor could it legally, of course. The Georgia American Civil Liberties Union’s Sean Young noted that any such effort would raise serious fourth amendment and equal protection constitutional concerns.

But literal or not the message to immigrant Georgians like Adelina Nicholls is loud and clear. Nicholls is the co-founder of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights and condemned the campaign as shocking and irresponsible.

“There are many things that they can base their campaigns on and yet they are using us again to [compete over] who is the most racist. It is insulting to us as a community. But we will fight back,” Nicholls said.

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Williams took his bus to two of three scheduled Georgia sanctuary cities on Wednesday, but cancelled a third stop due to schedule disruptions from protests. The campaign blamed “Antifa protesters and radical liberals who blocked the bus” from leaving its second stop outside Decatur, Georgia. Williams also claimed that Antifa activists shoved and spat on the candidate’s staff and supporters.

DeKalb county police said they received an “anonymous 911 call about alleged ‘violent’ protesters”, but that “upon arrival, DeKalb Police did not observe any violence or criminal activity and no reports were made by Williams’ campaign or other attendees”.

The Republican primary vote is on Tuesday 22 May. Williams is polling in fifth place among Republicans, with 3% of the vote.