The following article by Meg Kelly was posted on the Washington Post website May 7, 2018:
President Trump seemingly can’t stop talking about immigration. But many of his most frequent claims are wrong. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)
The president made it abundantly clear, intentionally or not, that March and April (and maybe even May) might as well be called “immigration month.” It wasn’t on the official schedule. Or worked out in great detail by White House staff. But the pending March 5 expiration of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the actions of Oakland’s mayor, a “caravan” moving slowly through Mexico to the border with the United States and the omnibus spending bill catapulted immigration back into the national conversation and very much onto President Trump’s mind.
The trend was unmistakable as we updated our now-administration-long project tracking the president’s false or misleading claims. Before March and April, about 9 percent of Trump’s claims were on immigration every month. But in those two months, that number jumped to 16 percent. In other words, it nearly doubled.
There wasn’t a perfectly coordinated message — unlike during his previous policy pushes to overturn Obamacare (“Obamacare is dead”) and for tax cuts (“This is the biggest tax cut ever”). So, as a reader service, we compiled the president’s most repeated immigration-related claims. If we have previously fact-checked one of these claims, the Pinocchio rating is noted.
“And we’re trying to have a DACA victory for everybody, by the way. And the Democrats are nowhere to be found.” (March 7)
We at the Fact Checker tend not to wade into the typical tit-for-tat of political accusations. But Trump’s increasingly frequent claim that Democrats are uninterested in fixing DACA or unwilling to negotiate called for us to bend the rules. Like everything else, just because the claim is often repeated doesn’t make it true.
By our count, Democrats and bipartisan groups of lawmakers have offered the president no less than four bargains to fix DACA, a program that Trump terminated. Remember the days of “Chuck and Nancy”? Back in September, the two Democrats said the president had agreed to an outline of an immigration plan that did not include the border wall. That fell apart just over a month later when the White House outlined its very conservative priorities for a DACA deal.
Fast forward to January. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) collaborated to develop a bipartisan immigration plan that included a path to citizenship for dreamers, a shake-up of the visa program and a year of funding for Trump’s border wall. The senators thought they had a deal until they attended a meeting at the White House where they were blindsided by immigration hard-liners and the president’s comment about “s—hole countries.”
With the Graham-Durbin deal in tatters and the specter of a government shutdown looming, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) met the president for lunch. Schumer said he offered Trump upward of $20 billion to build a border wall in exchange for DACA. Trump declined, and the government shut down.
The government reopened when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) agreed to allow an immigration debate. In mid-February, a group of bipartisan senators offered a new compromise — complete with $25 billion for the border. The plan attracted 54 votes, including eight Republicans, but failed to overcome a filibuster after the White House pushed to stop it from being passed. The White House’s preferred path of action received even fewer votes, 39, with many Republicans voting against it.
Meanwhile, the March 5 expiration became meaningless when courts blocked Trump’s termination.
President Trump has repeated this claim at least 41 times.
“We need a wall. Whether you’re a Republican or Democrat, we need a wall. And it will stop your drug flow. It will knock the hell out of the drug flow.” (April 9)
This is a longtime favorite claim of the president’s, but it hasn’t gotten more accurate since the last time we looked into it. Most drugs do come into the United States across the southern border with Mexico. But a wall would not limit this illegal trade. The six main drug cartels use increasingly sophisticated methods to move product across the border, as much of it travels through legal borders — disguised as innocuous liquids or alongside other cargo — or under tunnels unaffected by any possible physical barrier.
Even if the wall could curb illicit drug trafficking, it would have a minimal impact on the death toll from drug abuse. Prescription drug overdoses claim more lives than cocaine and heroin overdoses combined.
President Trump has repeated this claim at least 34 times.
