Jackson Free Press

The Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, is unsurprisingly under fire for his recent comments in response to the speech of a Gold Star family last week at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Army Capt. Humayun Khan was a Muslim American solider and the son of DNC guest speakers Khizr and Ghazala Khan. Humayun died at 27 years old in Baquba, Iraq, where he was stationed 12 years ago in a suicide attack.

It has been over a decade since the soldier's death, but the pain of losing a son for the country that the Khan family made their home for the last 36 years is still a painful reality.

Humayun's mother, Ghazala, stood next to her husband, Khizr, on the DNC stage as several million people watched, with a large portrait of her deceased son projected behind her. Ghazala did not speak but stood silently at her husband's side as he addressed and pleaded with Republican leaders (and Trump's family) over the GOP nominee's dangerous rhetoric, too often based on the ethnicity of his targets.

Trump responded quickly in typical fashion, based solely on assumptions and with little substance to back his statement: "If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe, she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. You tell me, but plenty of people have written that."

Let's just get something straight here. Islam and "radical Islamic terrorism" are not synonymous, just as the Westboro Baptist Church does not represent the majority of Christians.

The notion that people who are different than us—and whom we may not understand—should be perceived as a threat and received with caution is shameful for a nation widely regarded as a "melting pot." Vicious attacks on a "Gold Star" family—one that gives up a family member fighting for the United States—is a stark reminder that people of many faiths and backgrounds can and do love America.

Mississippi is no stranger to anti-immigrant rhetoric, both against the documented and undocumented. Gov. Phil Bryant has long touted faulty data claiming that immigrants hurt the state's economy, when the opposite is true. Then, in 2016, the Legislature almost passed an anti-"sanctuary cities" bill that would have compelled state and local officials to enforce federal immigration laws.

U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., told the Jackson Free Press at the Neshoba County Fair that federal legislation is an appropriate avenue to address illegal immigration. Wicker is now the co-author of a national bill urging for a ban on sanctuary cities throughout the country.

This is a nation built on immigration. Unless you are Native American, you are not indigenous to this country. The American experiment is testing whether or not we can all live together democratically, respecting each other's rights to live, worship and express ourselves differently. So far, Trump has failed that test.