Dr. Dobson’s Anti-Immigrant Screed Has Trump’s Name Written All Over It

Dr. James Dobson posted a defense of Donald Trump’s immigration views and policies over the weekend on his personal website.

We know what Trump thinks about immigrants who cross our southern border.  He says that they’re not the best people.  He says they’re drug dealers, criminals, and rapists.  

He even sees immigrant children as future troublemakers. He said, “They look so innocent.  They’re not innocent.”

Trump says these people come from “shithole countries.”  He wishes they came from Norway, but they don’t.  He thinks the only way to stop the “invasion” is to build a big wall from sea to shining sea.  

Trump’s views on immigrants have been controversial.  His administration’s handling of immigrants has been equally controversial.  (For more on that, please see my previous blog post, “Do We Care About the Camps?”)

Enter Dr. James Dobson, celebrity Evangelical.  Christian radio personality for many years.  Founder of Focus on the Family.  Trump loyalist.

As Trump has recently come under fire for the squalid conditions at U.S. border facilities, Dr. Dobson decided to jump into the fray.  This weekend, he posted a letter to his website describing his recent visit to a border facility in McAllen, Texas.

Great!  Right?  A first-person account.  An inside look.  More facts to shed light on the matter.

Here’s the problem: the first-person account of the facility in McAllen, Texas doesn’t amount to much.

Dr. Dobson’s first-person account forms just the skeletal structure of his letter.  He fleshes out the rest of it out with a curious hodgepodge of classic Trump rhetoric.    

Let’s start with what Dr. Dobson actually saw in McAllen, Texas.  

He saw a processing facility.  It was “a huge gym-like facility consisting of dozens of fenced-in areas.  Each one is crowded with detainees standing or sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on benches.”  Note that he did not say he saw cages or cells.  To him, they were “fenced-in areas.”  

Dobson asked a guard to translate for him so he could communicate with a group of “skinny young men” on the other side of a fence.  He asked the guard to translate, “God loves you,” and “I love you.”  The guard did.  The men did not reply.  That was the full extent of Dobson’s conversation with immigrants that he recounts.

Next, he observed that the children in the facility had “no toys or dolls except for a few items bought by compassionate border agents.”  How does Dobson know that the items were purchased by border agents? He does not tell us. 

And that’s about all we find out about the inside of the processing facility.

The second half of his personal account of McAllen, Texas consists of a brief description of “a grassy park underneath the international bridges where the ‘coyotes’ bring the refugees.”  He saw “about 200 people” sitting on the ground.  Then, “buses arrived to transport them to Border Control.”

That’s it.  That’s all Dobson personally attests to.  To recap, he took a brief look at the inside of a processing facility where he barely spoke to anyone, and then he had a glance at a group of about 200 people sitting under a bridge, waiting for a government bus to pick them up.  

The way he describes it, the whole operation seems rather orderly and dignified, even if it is also, as he says, “heart-wrenching.”

A lot of negative press has been coming out lately about these border facilities.  Dobson’s goal seems to be to rebut a lot of that, and he tries to accomplish this goal by describing a neat, orderly place staffed by warm-hearted guards who buy items for the children to enjoy.

Dobson’s letter is not merely a first-person account, though.  He paints a much fuller picture of the immigration situation.  In doing so, he supplies copious information that he has gathered from unnamed sources.    

What’s the rest of the picture Dobson paints, then? (Quotes are taken directly from his letter.)

·     “The ‘refugees’ arrive exhausted and ragged from walking hundreds of miles.”  

I’m not sure who told him that they all walked hundreds of miles.  Didn’t any of them take a bus or hop a train for part of the way?

·     Many of the children came “unaccompanied by a caring adult.”  

What makes him assume that the adults present are uncaring?  Should they smile more while they’re sitting in their “fenced-in areas?”  

·     “Some of the kids have been abused along the way.  Many of them carry lice, scabies, or other diseases […] Some of the women have been raped.”  

I don’t doubt that these statements could be true in some cases, but how did he unearth this information?  He does not describe having even one actual conversation with any immigrant in this facility.

·     “Doctors and medical staff are overwhelmed by their patient load.”  

This statement may be true, but at the same time, it does not line up with recent reports saying that independent medical doctors are trying to gain entry to these border facilities to see if immigrants are getting the medical attention they need.  These independent doctors report being completely denied access to quarantine areas. If doctors are shorthanded, shouldn’t more doctors be allowed in to help?  (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/child-detention-border-sick-quarantine-doctors.html)

·     “This year alone, people have come to our southern border from 127 countries, including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey, India, China, Palestine, Albania, San Salvador [sic], Guatemala, Honduras, and other countries around the world.  They speak their native tongues, which means they can’t be understood by each other or the staff.”  

Dobson seems to be pointing out the alarming fact that some immigrants do not speak English.  This is news to whom?

·     “They are the lowest rung of many societies.”  

Dr. Dobson should speak for himself.

·      “I was told that some of the vulnerable children are ‘recycled’ repeatedly to help men gain entry to this country.  An unknown number of these men are hardened criminals and drug runners.”  

The source of this information is not named.  He cites no witnesses, books, or articles.  

·     “The refugees quickly give themselves up to the agents […] They know they will be fed, clothed, and treated humanely.”  

How does Dobson get this insight into the thought process of a refugee without speaking more than a few words to any of them?  How does he know what they are expecting?  Would they agree that they are being treated humanely?

·     Here’s a big one: “The would-be immigrants are taken to the center and given cursory medical exams.  Then they are segregated by sex and age and placed in the fenced-in areas to be held for the next 20 days until they are processed and given a Notice to Appear.”  

Dobson does not attest to seeing this process unfold in person.  Nevertheless, this is a shocking passage.  Dobson has just described family separation.  

Babies are ripped out of their mothers’ arms.  Yet Dobson treats it as yet another orderly process.  As he describes it, “They are segregated by sex and age.” 

Wow.  Families are torn apart and the Trump administration has no plan in place for how they will eventually be reunited.  This could be the last moment that child and parent see each other.  This could be “goodbye” forever to Mommy and Daddy.  

Dobson, Mr. Focus on the Family himself, talks about family separation like they’re going through the checkout line at Target.  Standard routine.  Nothing to see here!  

Dobson does know that this is a sensitive subject, though— this whole “segregation by sex and age.”  He adds, “If that sounds inhumane, what would you or I do?  There is simply no other place to ‘house’ them.”  

Hmmm.  I don’t know.  There’s really no other choice?  That’s strange, because I just thought of a more humane choice in two seconds flat, right off the top of my head.  Here it is: don’t separate the children from their parents.  No matter what.

·     Next, he describes an astonishing, mind-bending process (again with no indication given of where he learned about it): “A single male typically seeks to find a child and a woman to help him ‘game the system.’  Clearly, many of these are ‘fake families,’ but there is no documentation in Pakistani or Bangladesh to challenge their claims […] These people are given a court case and released.  The vast majority are never seen again.  Most then become ‘anchor babies’ who are citizens with rights to bring members of their families.  Others are given transportation to an American city where they disappear into the culture.”  

Sit with that image for a moment.  These people just “disappear into the culture.”  Does that mean that they learn English and thus figure out how to blend in?  Isn’t that a good thing?  

Or is it that they’re more like arsenic which gets slipped into a drink secretly, making it fatally poisonous? If I had to guess, I’d say Dobson is leaning more toward the arsenic metaphor.  

One more thing before I move on. Is Dobson absolutely certain that you can’t get “documentation in Pakistani or Bangladesh?”  Or is the fact that they are not languages part of the problem? 

·     Dobson begins to wrap up the letter with a tribute to the border patrol agents.  He says they “obviously care about the detainees.”  They “work tirelessly.”  They “didn’t sign up to be caregivers,” yet they have “very little time to police the borders.  It is so porous that huge quantities of contraband, including all sorts of narcotics, flow into this country every day.  Then it is transported northward to America’s cities to be consumed by adolescents and millennials.”  

This is the head-scratching pinnacle of the whole letter.  The poor agents, wishing to be out there fighting bad guys, are instead relegated to a caregiving role that they didn’t sign up for.  What a shame. They wanted to be Dirty Harry and now they have to be Florence Nightingale.

Meanwhile, teenagers and millennials in America’s cities are doing drugs to no end.  Incidentally, does Dobson really believe that Baby Boomers are not doing any drugs these days?  Or Gen X?  Truly, only teenagers and Millenials are doing the drugs?  This is an unbelievably bizarre line.

·     Dobson then cuts to the chase: “President Trump’s border wall is so urgently needed.”

·     Another Trump-ism: “Fake media have told the American people that there is no crisis on the border.”  

I thought the problem, according to Dobson, was that the media said there IS a crisis, when really, there isn’t.  Is there or isn’t there?  I’m confused.

·     In conclusion: “Millions of illegal immigrants will continue flooding to this great land from around the world.  Many of them have no marketable skills.  They are illiterate and unhealthy.  Some are violent criminals.  Their numbers will soon overwhelm the culture as we have known it, and it could bankrupt the nation […] We have met a worldwide wave of poverty that will take us down if we don’t deal with it.  And it won’t take long for the inevitable consequences to happen.”  

Let’s recap.  He saw a facility.  He also saw a grassy area under a bridge (does grass grow well under bridges?) where about 200 immigrants were sitting and waiting for a bus.  

The rest of his information—about border laws, border enforcement, who is coming, why, where they’re from, what strategies they’re using—it’s all unsourced.  Perhaps he got the information from border guards, but he doesn’t say.  It could all be straight out of a speech from a Trump rally.  He could have learned about these things at his local barber shop, or talking to his next door neighbor, or watching Fox News.  He doesn’t say. 

He accuses the media of lying to the American public.  Yet the media routinely cites sources.  They also tell you what they’ve seen with their own eyes.

Dobson tells us what he’s seen with his own eyes.  It’s very little, in this case.  He goes on to cite a lot of additional information without naming sources.  Instead, he qualifies his statements with words like, “many,” “some,” “most,” “the vast majority,” and “others.”  

It’s strikingly similar to a common Trump trick of beginning a sentence with, “Many people say,” and then ending the sentence with something that he personally thinks.  It sounds more legitimate if you say that a bunch of unnamed people are responsible for the sentiment, and not just you.

What exactly is wrong with Dobson’s letter, then?  First of all, it carries a tone of authority because he’s saying, “Listen to me.  I’ve been there.”  Yet he’s very thin on details that he himself witnessed.  

He fleshes out his letter with classic Trumpian talking points: it’s an invasion, these are lowlife individuals who would stoop to any level, they’re from shithole countries, they’re taking advantage of us.  The media is lying.  

He relentlessly stokes fear about the people seeking asylum in our country.  Yet, his message is: never fear!  A wall will certainly fix the problem!  

It’s a fascinatingly disturbing letter to read.  It’s an ardent defense of Trump’s border policies, which include separating children from their parents, written by the guy who founded Focus on the Family.  What a terrible irony.

According to Dobson, Trump is a man who needs our support.  

I’d like to know why Dobson did it.  Why is a self-professed Evangelical Christian bowing down to a man who runs camps that are well-documented to be cruel, inhumane, unsanitary, and unsafe?  In these camps over the past year, there have been seven documented deaths, compared to zero deaths in the previous ten years.   And Trump does not care.

Why did Dobson go to bat for Trump?  Why didn’t he go to bat for the kids instead?  

Why didn’t he pause for a moment to ask himself WHY the people are fleeing their home countries?  Could there possibly be a reason why, other than, “They want to take advantage of us?”

What are the “inevitable consequences” that Dobson says will happen if these people continue to seek asylum in our country?  Does Dobson know what the “inevitable consequences” will be? Or does he just want to foment fear?

What is Dobson’s biblical basis for slamming the door shut to (whom he calls) unskilled, illiterate, and unhealthy people?  

Did they arrive here “unhealthy,” or have our camps made them so?  

Are the people truly unskilled and illiterate, or has Dobson simply failed to speak to them in order to find out?

Are they all actually violent criminals, or is Dobson making an assumption based on their outward appearance?

Is Dobson simply expressing his own personal thoughts in this letter, or is he trying to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump by coming to his defense and parroting his favorite talking points?

Finally, what does Dobson see in Donald Trump?  What about Donald Trump makes Dobson want to abandon Christ-like principles of compassion, mercy, love, and acceptance in favor of Trump’s favored principles of prejudice, fear-mongering, scapegoating, blame shifting, and condemnation?  

As you can see, I have a few questions I’d like Dr. Dobson to answer.  I wonder if he would care to write another letter and answer them for me?

Update (July 6): I emailed Dr. Dobson on July 1, asking him the very questions I wrote at the end of the post.

Update (August 21): I received an email response from a staff member at Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk. I have shared the full text of the email, along with some thoughts of my own, on a new blog post.