When I talk about serious matters like Trump's January 8, 2019 prime-time speech on immigration, I usually crack a couple of jokes in my introductory paragraphs so that we can all fill our lungs with air before plunging into the dark water. Notably, however, the chicken crossed the road on joking about Trump's immigration policies before Trump even announced that he was running. Chickens want no part of his racist, xenophobic bullshit.
In the cacophony of fonts below, I excerpt Trump's speech and several fact checking sources. I refused to watch, but obviously, I want to stay informed.
I don't know why the fonts are all drunk and rampaging in the streets. I assume it's in protest.
***
TRUMP (Transcript posted by NPR)
My fellow Americans: Tonight, I am speaking to you because there is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border.
Every day, Customs and Border Patrol agents encounter thousands of illegal immigrants trying to enter our country. We are out of space to hold them, and we have no way to promptly return them back home to their country.
CNN:
This is overstated. Available Customs and Border Protection data shows a total of 396,579 people were apprehended by the US Border Patrol for fiscal year 2018 at the southwest border, which would mean an average of 1,087 each day -- hardly the "thousands" that Trump purports. The numbers differ each month. The highest number of apprehensions was in September, with a daily average of nearly 1,400.
Apprehensions are still well below historic highs. In the early 2000s, for example, annual apprehensions routinely topped 1 million.
The number of people caught crossing at the border (the standard metric for determining the volume of illegal crossings generally) remains below annual levels under President Barack Obama and far below the high levels of the 1990s and early 2000s. Border Patrol arrested 396,579 people at the U.S. Mexico border in fiscal year 2018. The agency arrested an average of 400,751 people per year over the previous decade.
The key word here is “humanitarian.” Border crossings are way off their peak in the 2000s, and they are relatively steady over the last several years.
There has been an increase, though, in border crossings by families, which have been at record levels, and that has tested the government’s ability to deal with their situations. For a time, they tried detaining all family members, which required separating families.
This is misleading.
The agency also
deemed another 10,600 “inadmissible,” which refers to people who seek lawful entry into the United States but are barred from doing so. Together, that would be over 2,000, but “inadmissible” is not the same thing as illegal entry.
***
Trump:
America proudly welcomes millions of lawful immigrants who enrich our society and contribute to our nation. But all Americans are hurt by uncontrolled, illegal migration. It strains public resources and drives down jobs and wages. Among those hardest hit are African Americans and Hispanic Americans.
CNN:
It's very difficult to know exactly how much or little undocumented immigrants cost the United States. Many experts contest the notion that undocumented immigrants are a strain on the economy. A 2017 analysis noted that undocumented immigrants "make considerable tax contributions," for example.
New York Times:
This needs context.
Some economists argue that immigrants drive down available jobs and wages for Americans only if they are competing for the same jobs as the domestic work force. In many cases, immigrants — legal or illegal — are seeking jobs that American citizens do not want to do.
Kevin Hassett, the White House’s top economist, argued before joining the Trump administration that immigration spurs economic growth and that the United States should double its intake of immigrants.
This article was not written directly in response to this speech, but it does respond to similar rhetoric from a year ago in which Trump tries to pit minority groups against one another.
***
TRUMP:
Our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, including meth, heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl. Every week, 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90 percent of which floods across from our southern border. More Americans will die from drugs this year than were killed in the entire Vietnam War.
CNN:
Some 58,220 Americans died as a result of the Vietnam War. In 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the number of total drug overdose deaths was 70,327.
However, the President's assertion is misleading, conflating the drugs coming across the US-Mexico border with total drug deaths in the US.
CNN:
While Trump's statistics on heroin deaths are true, it's unclear what a border wall would do to reduce the amount of heroin coming across the border.
The CDC reported that in 2017 more than 15,482 people died from drug overdoses involving heroin in the US. That averages out to about 297 individuals each week. In addition, DEA's Heroin Signature Program, which analyzes heroin samples to determine where they were manufactured, determined that heroin from Mexico made up 86% of the samples analyzed in 2016.
However, the majority of heroin that comes across the southern border is smuggled in privately-owned vehicles and tractor-trailers at legal ports of entry, where the drug is co-mingled with legal goods, according to the DEA's 2018 annual drug threat assessment.
POLITCO:
Misleading. Most fentanyl comes from China. Although most heroin enters the U.S. through the border with Mexico, most of that is intercepted at legal ports of entry, according to a 2018 report by the Drug Enforcement Administration. "A small percentage of all heroin seized by CBP along the land border was between Ports of Entry,” the report reads. A separate DEA report published three years earlier said Mexican cartels move “the bulk of their drugs” over the border using passenger vehicles or tractor trailers. “The drugs are typically secreted in hidden compartments when transported in passenger vehicles or comingled with legitimate goods when transported in tractor trailers,” the report reads.
***
TRUMP:
In the last two years, ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of aliens with criminal records, including those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, and 4,000 violent killings. Over the years, thousands of Americans have been brutally killed by those who illegally entered our country, and thousands more lives will be lost if we don't act right now.
Washington Post:
“‘Without time or geographic parameters, the statement is just as accurate as saying, 'Thousands of Americans have been killed by men,”’ said Charis E. Kubrin, a criminology professor at University of California at Irvine.
“The challenge in finding concrete numbers is due to a shortfall of data. There is no national database or study tracking how many people have been killed by undocumented immigrants or the nationality of the victims.”
Politico:
That distorts the truth. Several studies show that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. A June 2018report by the libertarian Cato Institute found that legal immigrants were roughly one-fifth as likely to be incarcerated as native-born Americans. Undocumented immigrants were half as likely to be incarcerated, according to the report, which drew on 2016 data from the American Community Survey. Do undocumented immigrants commit crimes? Of course — but at lower rates than their native-born counterparts.
***
Trump:
Last month, 20,000 migrant children were illegally brought into the United States — a dramatic increase. These children are used as human pawns by vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs. One in three women are sexually assaulted on the dangerous trek up through Mexico. Women and children are the biggest victims, by far, of our broken system.
CNN:
Indeed, the trek to the US-Mexico border has been reported to be violent. According to data from Doctors Without Borders, 68.3% of migrants and refugees "entering Mexico reported being victims of violence during their transit toward the United States," and nearly one-third of women said they'd been sexually abused. But this very violence is also why women have chosen to travel in caravans.
Me:
Obviously, Trump does not care even a tiny bit about women and children. See also his family separation policy and his years of misogyny and racism.
*** I skipped a few paragraphs here ***
Trump:
Finally, as part of an overall approach to border security, law enforcement professionals have requested $5.7 billion for a physical barrier. At the request of Democrats, it will be a steel barrier rather than a concrete wall. This barrier is absolutely critical to border security. It's also what our professionals at the border want and need. This is just common sense.
CNN:
Democrats have long strenuously opposed Trump's campaign promise that he would build a concrete wall on the US-Mexico border. But they did not propose a steel barrier as an alternative. Rather, Democrats have continued to oppose the construction of any new steel or concrete barrier on the southern border. They have only kept the door open to funding a border barrier as part of a broader immigration deal.
Politico:
Congressional Democrats did not ask that the wall be made of steel rather than concrete. When Trump first said he was making that concession, Democratic party leaders said they didn't care. “There’s no requirement that this government be shut down while we deliberate the future of any barrier, whether it’s a fence or a wall,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
***
Trump:
The border wall would very quickly pay for itself. The cost of illegal drugs exceeds $500 billion a year — vastly more than the $5.7 billion we have requested from Congress. The wall will also be paid for, indirectly, by the great new trade deal we have made with Mexico.
New York Times:
False.
First, the revised North American Free Trade Agreement, known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, has yet to pass in Congress. Any economic benefits from the agreement, if it passes, will most likely come in the form of lower tariffs for American companies or higher wages for American workers.
This is different from Mr. Trump’s campaign promise that Mexico would finance the wall.
Washington Post:
1) Again, a border wall wouldn’t stop all the drugs; in fact, it would only stop a small proportion of heroin from Mexico, according to Trump’s own DEA.
3) Even if it saved money by stopped some drugs, there is also the matter of lost economic productivity. As The Post’s Christopher Ingraham has written, that could cost an estimated $4 billion per year.
In other words, the idea that the wall would “quickly pay for itself” is highly speculative, at best.
CNN:
"The wall will also be paid for indirectly by the great new trade deal we have made with Mexico."
The President has made this false claim before.
Trump long ago abandoned his 2016 campaign promise that Mexico would pay to build a wall. Instead, he now makes the case that Mexico will "indirectly" pay for the barrier, thanks to the potential increase in tax revenue generated by his replacement for the North America Free Trade Agreement.
But the new deal hasn't yet been ratified by Congress, where Democrats have expressed opposition. And even if the new United States Mexico Canada Agreement ends up raising tax revenue, there's nothing earmarking that money for a wall. Income and corporate taxes are general revenue that would have to be appropriated by Congress.
Another way trade could bring money into the Treasury is through tariffs -- which are paid by American importers when they buy foreign goods. But like the original NAFTA, the new deal aims to keep trade between the three countries largely tariff-free.
***
I don't know about you, but that's about as much as I can stomach, especially since Trump spends a good chunk of the speech implying that undocumented immigrants are bloodthirsty murderers.
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