On Thursday Nov. 1st, President Trump released a political ad that accused Democrats of plotting to help murderers and criminals invade the country.

The ad is a flagrantly manipulative and fear mongering move, a new low in Trump's inflammatory closing argument of the GOP's midterm campaign.

The video — produced by Trump's campaign — features Luis Bracamontes, a Mexican immigrant who returned to the United States after being deported, and was then convicted of killing two California deputies. Bracamontes is shown with a chilling smile, saying, "I'm going to kill more cops soon," meanwhile, a caption flashes across the screen that reads "Democrats let him into our country. Democrats let him stay." The video then goes on to show footage of people crossing the border as menacing music plays. The screen then reads, "Who else would Democrats let in?" The spot is not only a clear attempt at sowing fear, but also rife with misinformation, as Bracamontes was actually originally deported by a democrat, Bill Clinton, and let back in by a Republican, George W. Bush.

After posting the video, Trump told reporters he would deploy 15,000 troops to the southern border to repel a caravan of central American immigrants, which is still hundreds of miles away. He also suggested that these troops could fire on the migrant caravan if rocks or stones were thrown, a claim that contradicts Official Department of Defense regulations, which state, "deadly force is justified only when there is a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm to a person." Additionally, Trump repeatedly implied to reporters that there are Middle Eastern individuals hiding amongst the caravan, but later said, "There's no proof of anything. There's no proof of anything. But there could very well be."

In the wake of all of this troubling rhetoric surrounding immigration, Trump claimed Thursday that he would sign an executive order "next week" aimed at limiting immigrants ability to seek asylum in the United States. These developments come on the heels of Trump's recent assertion that he aims to repeal the 14th amendment, which automatically grants citizenship to children born in the United States.

This recent rise in anti-immigration rhetoric is yet another example of the President's willingness to exploit racial divides to falsely inflate his power and the cause of the Republican midterm campaign. It's clear that the Trump administration has chosen to scapegoat and villify central American immigrants in an attempt to counteract rising enthusiasm about democratic candidates in the midterm elections. The question is, will voters succumb to Trump's scare tactics, or see it as the manipulative and divisive rhetoric that it is?