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With the mid-term elections coming up, Donald Trump delivered a speech at the White House that doubled down on anti-immigration sentiment.
According to the New York Times, the speech was riddled with inaccuracies.
Here they are:
1. Only ‘like three per cent’ of migrants show up to immigration court proceedings
He said:
We’re not letting them into our country. And then they never show up, almost, it’s like a level of 3 percent. They never show up for the trial. So by the time their trial comes, they’re gone, nobody knows where they are.
This is false. His three per cent referred to the rate migrants showed up to immigration proceedings after being apprehended and released into the US.
In fact, most do show up to court proceedings.
Data from the Justice Department shows that in the 2017 fiscal year, only 28 per cent of immigrants failed to attend court proceedings. Of asylum seekers, only 11 per cent didn’t show up, and of those who participated in a pilot program as an alternative to detention, 99 per cent attended. That program ended last year.
Trump's administration came under fire after it was revealed that children as young as three were appearing in court alone for their deportation hearing.
2. ‘Nearly 100 percent of heroin in the United States enters through the southern border’
He said:
Nearly 100 percent of heroin in the United States enters through the southern border. Think of that, 100 percent almost of heroin comes in through the southern border, along with roughly 90 percent of cocaine and the majority of meth and a substantial portion of the ultralethal fentanyl killing our youth.
Though this is true, it is misleading. Most fentanyl enters the US from packages mailed from China, or through Canada from China, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s latest National Drug Enforcement Administration’s report.
The most common method of drug smuggling is for criminal organisations to drive them through official American ports of entry – not in migration caravans or people on foot. Given Trump’s fiery rhetoric around caravans and immigrants, this is an important distinction to make.
3. Under Barack Obama’s administration, they ‘separated children from parents’
According to a report by the New York Times, the Obama administration, and others before Trump, did separate some families. The key difference then and now, is that then it was a very rare occurrence, whilst under Trump it has been ‘knowingly enacted.’
4. He has $3.2bn towards the building of the Mexican border wall and has another $1.6bn coming
This is misleading.
Trump signed a spending bill in March to give $1.6bn to replace old barriers along the already existing barrier with new ones. However this budget does not allow funding for a new wall. In September he signed another spending bill, and it didn’t include any money for his wall.
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