After Donald Trump entered the hall triumphantly on the second night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, the program turned to one of its signature issues: illegal immigration. An ominous video of chaos at the US-Mexico border led to a speech by US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who declared: “We are facing an invasion at our southern border.”
Here’s a look at some of the claims made Tuesday:
VIDEO NARRATOR: “Biden made one of the worst mistakes of any president in history when he told illegals to come here and invade our border.”
THE FACTS: After the allegation, the video cuts to President Joe Biden saying, “I would, in fact, make sure there was — we immediately moved toward the border,” and the narrator says, “And they did.”
But important context is missing. The clip was taken from September 12, 2019, Democratic presidential debate. One moderator, Univision’s Jorge Ramos, when discussing immigration issues, notes that Biden served as vice president in President Barack Obama’s administration, which deported 3 million people. He then asks if Biden is “prepared to say tonight that you and President Obama made a mistake?”
Biden responds by noting Obama’s achievements on immigration and discussing then-President Trump’s policies. He then adds: “What I would do as president would be much more, because things have changed. In fact, I would make sure that happened: we would immediately go to the border. All people seeking asylum deserve to be heard. This is who we are.”
Since then, Biden has repeatedly talked about sending agents and other law enforcement resources to the border to deal with the influx of migrants.
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VIDEO NARRATOR: “Biden’s incompetence led to the horrific deaths of 300,000 Americans, not because of a nuclear bomb, but because of lethal fentanyl brought across Biden’s open border.”
THE FACTS: While it is true that much of the U.S. fentanyl is smuggled from Mexico, 86.4% of fentanyl trafficking crimes were committed by U.S. citizens in the 12 months through September 2023, according to the Commission of USA Feathers.
The fentanyl scourge began long before Biden took office. Border apprehensions, which tell only part of the story, have risen sharply under Biden, which may in part reflect better detection. About 27,000 pounds (12,247 kilograms) of fentanyl were seized by U.S. authorities in the government’s 2023 budget year, compared with 2,545 pounds (1,154 kilograms) in 2019, when Trump was president.
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CRUZ: “Every day Americans die – murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants that Democrats freed.”
THE FACTS: A series of heinous and high-profile crimes involving people in the US illegally have been in the news in recent months. But there is nothing to support the claim that this happens every day.
The foreign-born population, immigrants in the country legally and illegally, was estimated to number 46.2 million, or nearly 14% of the U.S. total, in 2022, according to the Census Bureau, including about 11 million in the country illegally. Hardly a month goes by without at least one person in the country being illegally accused of a horrific and high-profile crime, such as the murder of a 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia or the strangling death of June a 12 year old Houston girl.
Texas is the only state that tracks crime by immigration status. A study published by the National Academy of Sciences, based on data from the Texas Department of Public Safety from 2012 to 2016, found that people in the U.S. illegally had “substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants in a series of crimes. ”
Although FBI statistics do not separate crimes by the immigration status of the perpetrator, there is no evidence of an increase in crimes perpetrated by migrants, either along the US-Mexico border or in cities experiencing the largest influx of migrants. , like New York. Studies have found that people living in the U.S. illegally are less likely than native-born Americans to be arrested for violent, drug-related, and property crimes.
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Find AP Fact Checks at https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.
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