A meme circulating the odd corners of the internet popped up on Facebook on Monday claiming that President Donald Trump said, “Undocumented immigrants are not people; they are animals.” The meme paired this alleged quote to another alleged quote from Hitler of the same meter: “Jews are not people; they are animals.”
First, TWS Fact Check could not find this direct quote from Hitler (though his statement to Josef Hell in 1922 that “If I am ever really in power, the destruction of the Jews will be my first and most important job” along with others in that vein certainly conveys his thoughts).
What of Trump?
The meme’s quote stems from a brief exchange between President Donald Trump and a California sheriff during a “California sanctuary state roundtable” in May. The sheriff was complaining about a particular California law (SB 54) that essentially prevented her from alerting ICE of the release dates of undocumented immigrants charged with minor crimes. “There could be an MS-13 member I know about—if they don’t reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it,” the sheriff told Trump. To which he replied:
The context (baked into that of the entire meeting) is the MS-13 gang and other such criminals, which Trump has repeatedly referred to with the same pejorative: “Animals.”
Vox senior reporter Dara Lind argued at the time “it’s not clear whom the president was referring to—whether he was simply picking up on Sheriff Mims’s reference to MS-13 gang members or referring to deportees more broadly.” Lind goes on, “[Trump] didn’t exactly bend over backward to specify that not all immigrants deported by this administration are ‘animals.’”
However, Trump later clarified that he was referencing MS-13 when asked by a reporter the next day. “I’m referring, and you know I’m referring, to the MS-13 gangs that are coming in,” the president said.
Regardless of any perceived gray area surrounding whom Trump was calling “animals,” he did not say “undocumented immigrants are not people; they are animals.” Rather, he said “these aren’t people. These are animals” in the context of deportees, specifically members of MS-13.
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