Since taking office four years ago, President Donald Trump has told more than 23,000 lies or misleading comments on everything from the economy and the environment to Russia and the coronavirus.
But there is one issue on which he has lied more than any other: immigration.
According to The Washington Post, which has been tracking the president's deceptions since January 20, 2017 - the date Trump entered the White House - the president has told
more than 2,800 lies regarding immigration.
Even among all the lies that he has repeated the most, regardless of the subject, two are linked to immigration.
As the end of his term draws near, we have taken on the task of reviewing 10 of his most prominent false claims on immigration issues:
The "great and beautiful wall" that will be ready "very soon"
According to the Washington Post count, Trump has said more than 260 times that the border wall with Mexico, his remembered flagship campaign promise, "will be ready very soon."
But this is misleading.
The truth is that almost four years later, the Trump Administration has built just 415 miles of new barriers on the nearly 2,000 miles of border that the United States and Mexico share.
That is,
less than a quarter of what he ever promised
during his presidential campaign.
An appeals court demands the cease of the construction of the border wall
Oct. 12, 202000: 27
After adjusting it several times, his most recent goal is to erect a total of 450 miles of barriers by the end of the year, of which only 25 miles represent really new sections, where there was no barrier before Trump arrived, according to the newspaper. The New York Times.
The rest are replacements for dilapidated sections or places where there were only barriers for vehicles but not for pedestrians.
[Trump considers announcing his 2024 campaign on the day Biden takes office]
At a construction rate of 10 miles per week, the government is very likely to reach and even exceed its goal before leaving the White House.
But, once again, it will not be the "great and beautiful wall" that Trump offered in the beginning,
much less will it have been paid for by Mexico
, as he also promised.
According to a recent report by the investigative journalism website ProPublica, the government has awarded about $ 10 billion in contracts for the wall - paid for with US taxpayer money.
No, the Democrats do not want "open borders"
Another common falsehood on the president's lips has to do with the Democratic Party's stance on border security.
According to the account kept by the Washington Post, about 200 times Trump has said that Democrats want "open borders" that allow anyone to enter.
However, that is not true and has been rejected by party leaders, who highlight their support for the deployment of funds for border security, implementing new technologies such as smart sentry towers, for example.
Especially during the presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly accused that his opponent and today president-elect, Joe Biden, would open the borders of the United States for the indiscriminate entry of migrants.
That is not true either.
Biden argued many times that his plan is to implement an effective border review that "will enforce the laws," but "at the same time guarantee the dignity of migrants and uphold their legal right to seek asylum."
It is not true that Democrats are responsible for the separation of families
The separation of migrant families on the border with Mexico will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the most dire immigration policies of the Trump presidency.
However, on more than one occasion, Trump tried to blame his predecessor Barack Obama's government and his party in general, claiming that it was a Democratic law that he had no choice but to execute.
That's a lie.
The so-called “zero tolerance” policy, which culminated in thousands of children being taken from their parents, was announced in May 2018 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
To this day, at least 600 children remain separated from their parents, many of whom were deported to their countries of origin without the Government now being able to locate them.
Immigrants do not increase crime
For many immigrants, especially Mexicans, it is difficult to forget that Trump began his run for the presidency by pointing out that Mexico sent people who brought problems and crime with them.
However, numerous studies show otherwise.
Trump publishes a video where he insists that there was fraud in the elections, but shows no evidence
Dec. 2, 202000: 36
The Cato Institute, which conducts independent, nonpartisan research on public policy, has repeatedly analyzed data on those who enter the criminal justice system in Texas (the only state that keeps track of the immigration status of those arrested).
In their most recent study, published in November, they found that in 2018, the criminal conviction rate for undocumented immigrants was 782 per 100,000.
By comparison, the rate among people born in the United States was 1,422 per 100,000.
That means that
undocumented immigrants are 45% less likely to be convicted of a crime
, including violent crimes, property crimes, homicides, and sex crimes.
In the case of legal immigrants, the rate is 535 per 100,000.
[William Barr states that the Department of Justice has discovered no evidence of fraud that could change the outcome of the election]
What's more, between 1990 and 2013, as the number of undocumented immigrants in the country rose from 3.5 million to 11.2 million,
the violent crime rate fell 48%,
including fewer armed robberies, robberies, rapes and murders, according to data from the FBI cited in an American Immigration Council study published in 2015.
Other academic studies have also shown that
there is no relationship between immigration and crime.
One of them, published in September 2019 by Christian Gunadi, an economist at the University of California, Riverside, found that the probability of undocumented immigrants going through a prison is 33 times lower than that of Native Americans.
Trump said he would present a bill to give citizenship to Dreamers
In July of this year, in an exclusive interview with Noticias Telemundo, Trump denied that his intention was to deport young people benefiting from the DACA program and stated that "in the coming weeks," he would present a bill or an executive order that would open "A path to citizenship" for undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.
That turned out to be false.
People protest immigration reform for DACA recipients and a new Dream Act, in Los Angeles, California, the United States on January 22, 2018.REUTERS
Since he said that, 21 weeks have passed and that path to citizenship for the so-called Dreamers remains closed.
In fact, a couple of weeks after his remarks, the Trump administration reduced the extension of DACA from two years to just one for those who renew their protection and stopped receiving new applications to enter the program.
All of this after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of DACA continuity in June in a decision that the Trump administration said it would insist on reversing.
Immigrants do go to court dates, contrary to what Trump says
When justifying the multiple obstacles that his government has imposed on migration, especially those who seek to exercise their right to seek asylum in the United States, the president has said many times that it is because these people do not attend their court dates.
In October, in his last presidential debate against Biden, Trump went even further, saying that "only those with the lowest IQ" showed up for their appointments after being released.
That is completely untrue.
Last year, 99% of asylum seekers turned up for their court hearings, despite an average wait of 1,030 days for a decision on their cases, according to the University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) think tank. from Syracuse.
[Can Trump grant pardons to his family members before being charged with a crime?]
Data from the Government itself that span more than a decade (2008-2019) show that 83% of immigrants with deportation orders attend their court hearings.
If they have an attorney to represent them, the court appearance rate goes up to 97%, according to an analysis by the American Immigration Council.
Likewise, 86% of families released from ICE detention centers between 2001 and 2016 attended their court appointments (97% in cases where they had a lawyer).
The data not only contradicts Trump's assertions, but also the effectiveness of the indefinite detentions implemented by his Government and the damages of the lack of legal advice to immigrants.
It is not true that "a single immigrant can bring an unlimited number of relatives"
During his administration, Trump criticized many times the right of permanent or naturalized residents to bring family members by legal means, something he calls "chain migration."
In his 2018 State of the Nation speech, he further misrepresented the process by saying that under the current US immigration system, "a single immigrant can bring virtually an unlimited number of distant relatives."
That statement is misleading, and ignores the cumbersome procedures that an immigrant must go through to bring a relative.
Trump admits he will leave the White House if the Electoral College ratifies Biden
Nov. 27, 202002: 03
As most immigrants know, it is possible to legally bring a spouse, minor children, or parents.
But the admission of relatives such as siblings or children of legal age requires such long waiting times that few request it.
According to the most recent State Department bulletin, the wait to apply for an unmarried child older than 21 is, on average, five years, although in the case of Mexico, the cases that are being reviewed right now date from 2010. Petitions for married children by US citizens are
11 years late
and trying to bring a sibling today would take
no less than 13 years.
The false cost of illegal immigration
Another constant from Trump's four years has been overstating the cost of illegal immigration to the US economy.
In a tweet in December 2018, he claimed without citing a source or evidence that the country was losing $ 250 billion a year to illegal immigration.
According to estimates by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which aims to reduce immigration of any kind, the cost of illegal immigration to the American taxpayer is about $ 132 billion annually, almost half of what it said. Trump.
It should also be noted that in 2018, undocumented immigrants contributed $ 31.9 billion in taxes to the national economy.
Not all the undocumented are detained and then released
The president has repeated many times that he has eliminated the immigration practice under which undocumented immigrants who were arrested could wait for the decision of their case within the United States without remaining in government custody.
In English, the practice is known as
catch and release
and became known during the government of Republican President George W. Bush, more than 10 years ago.
A US Customs and Border Protection vehicle patrols along a new section of the border wall in El Paso, Texas, USA, as seen from Ciudad Juárez.REUTERS
At an event in September this year, Trump insisted on the lie when he said "we have eliminated
catch and release,
one of the biggest scams of all time."
[Follow all the verifications made by our T Verifica team]
The truth is that the practice of releasing every arrested undocumented immigrant
has not been completely eliminated.
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, several detention centers have released immigrants, including children, either under pressure from activists or court rulings.
For example, the so-called Flores Agreement of 1997 prohibits the prolonged detention of migrant minors.
In 2015, another court ruling determined that the Flores Agreement covered children detained crossing the border either alone or with their parents.
Lie: The number of arrests at the border is the lowest
During his visit to Yuma, Arizona, in August of this year, Trump boasted that the number of arrests at the border had dropped so much that “we have never had numbers like this,” and that this was thanks to the wall that, as we said more up, has not built.
However, the Customs and Border Protection data contradicts Trump's story.
The number of undocumented people detained at the border
has been increasing in the last year.
Although in August of this year there were 50,014 arrests on the border with Mexico compared to 62,707 in the same month of 2019, already in September and October of this year the numbers were higher than the previous one.
In September 2019, the Border Patrol made a total of 52,546 arrests of undocumented persons, but the same month in 2020 recorded 57,674 arrests,
an increase of 5,128.
In October 2019, arrests reached 45,139, while in October 2020, arrests rose to 69,237, or 24,098 more.
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