How Donald Trump turned the immigration debate from reform to 'anchor babies'

Less than a year ago, anti-immigration activists watched angrily as President Obama took sweeping executive action to shield millions of people in the country without legal status from deportation. But in a few short months, Trump has helped flip the national dialogue and given rise to a new surge of calls to ramp up deportations and wall off the Mexican border.

“It’s a good time for us,” said longtime anti-immigrant activist Robin Hvidston, whose group, We the People Rising, helped organize the rally in Ontario over the weekend. “Donald Trump has brought these issues to the front burner. Does it feel like public opinion is shifting? I’d say yes.”

Since his campaign kickoff speech in June, in which he brazenly called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and criminals, Trump has espoused rhetoric that appears designed to rile immigrant advocates and fire up their adversaries. Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said Trump’s campaign is “normalizing” anti-immigrant ideas and racist rhetoric long considered fringe views.

His campaign has been embraced by those on the extreme right on immigration. The Daily Stormer, a website that has called for anti-immigrant violence, endorsed Trump for president. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which seeks to reduce all forms of immigration, praised Trump’s recent policy paper on immigration as the “American workers’ Bill of Rights.”

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-immigration-politics-20150826-story.html