Donald Trump is not an inconsistent man, and an interview with a reporter at the National Association of Black Journalists' convention in Chicago this week revealed the Republican presidential nominee's unpleasant side.

He lied, he insulted, he whined, he was a racist and a misogynist, he dodged questions, he omitted answers, and he showed the kindness and gratitude of a kindergarten kid who pees in the sandbox and expects others to clean it up.

Above all, the Republican presidential candidate continued to attack the scapegoating of illegal immigrants that has been a centerpiece of his 2024 presidential campaign. But this time, he sought to further his claim that Donald J. Trump is the greatest president for black people since Abraham Lincoln.

He revealed this strategy during a debate with President Biden on June 28. Trump Trump argued that immigration is “a big hit to black people” and “steals black jobs.” In Georgia, a state he narrowly lost in 2020, Biden's campaign aired radio and television ads claiming that Biden cares more about illegal immigrants than the black community.

At the NABJ convention, President Trump blamed open borders for endangering the job security of black workers, never mind their unemployment rates. reached an all-time low Under both the Trump and Biden administrations, illegal immigration has risen to levels not seen in a generation. When the moderator asked what his message was to all the black journalists in front of him and those watching online, Trump replied, “Stop the people who are taking black people's jobs from coming into our country.” When asked what he would do on his first day in office, he blurted out, “I'm going to close the border.”

Trump's tactic is another legacy of Proposition 187, a 1994 California ballot measure aimed at making life harder for undocumented immigrants. Republican politicians then, and now, have found the best way to win over black voters, long a Democratic base, is to argue that illegal immigrants are a burden who take away social services, steal jobs and otherwise hit communities harder than others.

Here's the thing: Even if President Trump has made the threat of illegal immigration 11 times greater, these concerns have a historical basis.

The ensuing tensions were real as South Los Angeles began to transition from the heart of the city's black community to a predominantly Latino area in the 1980s and 1990s. After the Los Angeles riots, groups protested outside work sites, accusing contractors of giving jobs to Latinos because they could work for less than black workers. In the fight against Proposition 187, Latino political leaders assumed that blacks would join them without question, angering leaders and community activists.

These events led to 47% of black voters voting for Proposition 187, helping the resolution pass handily.

Some of the most visible black voices in the anti-immigration movement of the past 25 years — homeless activist Ted Hayes, the late radio host Terry Anderson, the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, former gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder — are from that era. One of Southern California's most vocal anti-immigrant voices today is Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren. A Compton native, Warren has scolded immigrants who don't speak English from the podium and waged an aggressive campaign against street vendors. Add in the deep-rooted anti-black sentiment among Latinos, highlighted by the racist leaked audiotape scandal at Los Angeles City Hall in 2022, and it's no wonder Trump thinks he's succeeding by hoping to anger black voters over a supposed invasion from the southern border.

The reality is that black people are not as receptive to the anti-immigrant message as President Trump and the Republican Party would like to think.

A 2006 Pew Research Center survey found that 47% of blacks believe that immigrants without legal documents are illegal in the United States. They should be allowed to stay.That compares with 33% of whites, a similar Pew Research Center report showed in 2013. 82% of blacks Most Americans believe there should be a path to legalization, compared with 67% of whites. A Pew survey released this year found that 73%But that's still far higher than the 53% of whites who feel the same way, and only 2 percentage points behind Latinos, who have increasingly shifted to the right in opposition to illegal immigration since the days of Proposition 187.

The general acceptance doesn't surprise Los Angeles City Councilman Marqueece Harris Dawson, who campaigned against Proposition 187 in 1994, canvassing door-to-door in his native South Los Angeles and arguing that the proposition was a divisive issue used by Republicans to divide his black and Latino neighbors and make them forget that they were both working class.

“What I say to people is, ‘Can you hear them? [Prop. 187 supporters] “Are you talking about Canadians or Germans?,” Harris-Dawson says. “The black and Latino people I spoke to clearly understood that.”

Harris Dawson didn't have to make the same argument recently in Atlanta when the issue of illegal immigration came up in conversation.

“They said, 'We support immigration reform because we don't want working-class people who can't defend themselves,'” he said. In other words, it was better for the black community to give immigrants full rights than to allow them to remain undocumented and vulnerable to being used to exploit black workers. “How clever! They understand that workers don't take jobs, employers give jobs.”

He believes Trump's continued hardline approach to illegal immigration will draw black voters away from the Democratic Party, but that Trump's years of blowing racist dog whistles “will also cause us to lose them.” What's more, the councilman said, “people have seen how it goes…. A new neighbor comes in and they think, 'Oh, what a nice family,' and that's what happens. And then 10 years later, the parents are still undocumented and the kids can't go to college.”

“Black people can empathize with people dealing with a system that is ostensibly meant to help them, but in reality does the opposite,” Harris-Dawson concluded.