Thursday, October 24, 2024

Musk's misinformation shakes Aurora

Hi, it's Julia in San Francisco. I visited Aurora, Colorado, to understand how migrants are trying to find a foothold in a community that ha
by Julia Love

Hi, it's Julia in San Francisco. I visited Aurora, Colorado, to understand how migrants are trying to find a foothold in a community that has become a target of Donald Trump and Elon Musk's harsh immigration rhetoric. But first...

Three things you need to know today:

Victims of misinformation

My colleagues and I recently did a major data analysis of Elon Musk's posts about immigration and voter fraud. He frames migration to the US as something chaotic, unchecked and scary — and a tool that could be weaponized by the Democrats to rig the election in November. Musk owns X, and has more than 200 million followers. Immigration and voter fraud has become his most popular policy topic online, our analysis found. 

Of course, noncitizens cannot vote for president. But migrants and advocates I spoke with in Aurora were nonetheless unsettled by the way Musk, Trump, and therefore some news outlets portray their community. It's making life in the US unsafe – not because of the uptick of migration, but because of misinformation.

Aurora is portrayed as being overtaken by Venezuelan gangs in posts by Musk and others on X, formerly known as Twitter. Trump recently visited for a campaign event, saying he would "rescue Aurora" from violent migrants.

Locals I spoke with said they don't need saving. But the rhetoric has nonetheless left some Venezuelan migrants feeling as though they have nowhere to turn, said Andrea Loya, executive director of Casa de Paz, a nonprofit that receives migrants released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. Due to strained diplomatic ties between the US and Venezuela, deportation flights have ground to a halt. But with misinformation swirling on social media, many Venezuelan migrants don't feel welcome in Aurora either.

"A lot of these folks right out of the gate are coming off saying, 'Don't have a prejudgment on me because I'm from a particular country,'" Loya said. "We've never had a group that had known they were coming out to something like this, to these headlines we have been seeing lately."

Since the beginning of the Trump administration, Casa de Paz has gradually been scaling back its public presence. A P.O. box is the only trace of the group's whereabouts online. Shortly after reports of alleged Venezuelan gang activity in Aurora surfaced on social media, the nonprofit began receiving threatening phone calls.

On a recent Friday afternoon, Loya sat parked in an unmarked van, waiting to greet the next group of migrants to be released from detention. After a few hours of waiting, Loya greeted a group of eight men and led them to her office, where they would be able to have a bite to eat and map out transit to their final destinations in the US. Speaking in Vietnamese, French and Spanish, the men phoned their families. Cries of "papá" rang out as they shared the news that they were free.

After calling his mother, Victor, a 28-year-old who made clothing in his native Paraguay, collapsed on the couch with a piece of pizza, enjoying a brief rest before beginning his journey to New York, where a friend was waiting to receive him. He spent about three months in detention, occasionally catching snippets of the news and paying especially close attention whenever the topic of migration came up. He worried about what Trump's frustration with migrants might mean for him.

"They put us all in the same bag," Victor, who did not want his last name to be printed due to safety concerns, said in Spanish.

On my way to the airport, I stopped to speak to Joanna Marin, 54, who stood at a busy intersection, twirling a bouquet of cotton candy to catch the eyes of passing drivers. For Marin, like most migrants I spoke with, the election was an afterthought — she was focused on rebuilding all that she had lost in her native Venezuela. Four days after arriving in Aurora, she was back in business.

"What I have learned from all the blows life has dealt me is I have to carry on, I have to carry on," she said in Spanish. "I can't stand still." —Julia Love

The big story

Upstart EV maker Rivian Automotive, a Tesla rival, has racked up more US safety violations initially deemed "serious" than any other automaker this year. And there are incidents alleged by workers at its plant in Normal, Illinois, that haven't made it into government reports.

Get fully charged

Siemens is in talks about a potential deal to acquire software maker Altair Engineering.

Apple is making headway on updated MacBook Air models with M4 chips.

Microsoft is struggling to retain women and underrepresented minority employees.

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