MURPHYSBORO, Ill. — Alicia Hooten thinks the country has plenty of problems. "So many; so many," she said warily, before settling on the one at the top of her mind with the midterm election just a week away. "I feel like we're fighting for our freedom when it comes to our borders."
She spoke while waiting for President Trump's campaign rally on Saturday, hours after the deadly shootings in Pittsburgh. Ms. Hooten, a graphic designer from nearby Sparta, Ill., said she was especially concerned about the caravan of migrants in southern Mexico, calling it "a ploy to destroy America, and to bring us to our knees."
"I'm not going to take it — not going to go down without a fight," she insisted.
For the last two weeks, Mr. Trump and his conservative allies have operated largely in tandem on social media and elsewhere to push alarmist, conspiratorial warnings about the migrant caravan more than 2,000 miles from the border. They have largely succeeded in animating Republican voters like Ms. Hooten around the idea of these foreign nationals posing a dire threat to the country's security, stability and identity.
Mr. Trump described them as "an invasion of our country" on Monday, and his administration announced plans to deploy at least 5,200 active-duty troops to the southern border by the end of this week, its biggest show of force yet in confronting the migrants.
But as the country processes the cumulative trauma of two actual crises that occurred inside its borders — a spate of pipe bombs sent to the president's political opponents, and the massacre of 11 people at a synagogue by a man who spewed anti-Semitic vitriol and called immigrants "invaders" — there is clear overlap between the hatred and delusion that drove this lethal behavior and the paranoia and misinformation surrounding the caravan.
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