Tag: U.S. border

Trump keeps mentioning taped-up women at the border. Experts have no idea what he’s talking about.

The Trump administration has repeatedly made this claim, but the data isn’t clear. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

President Trump has a new favorite anecdote, one that fixates on tape.

Specifically, in public remarks at the White House, at the border and at farming conventions, the president has been talking about tape on the mouths of migrant women. On at least eight occasions over a period of 12 days this month, the president has argued publicly for his proposed wall on the southern border by claiming without evidence that traffickers tie up and silence women with tape before illegally driving them through the desert from Mexico to the United States in the backs of cars and windowless vans.

In Trump’s telling, the adhesive is sometimes blue tape. Other times it is electrical tape or duct tape.

View the complete January 17 article by Katie Mettler on The Washington Post website here.

The administration’s rationale for urgent border action doesn’t hold up

The following article by Philip Bump was posted on the Washington Post website April 4, 2018:

A U.S. Border Patrol team uses a dog in a search for undocumented immigrants near the U.S.-Mexico border Dec. 9, 2015. (John Moore/Getty Images)

There was no indication on Wednesday of last week that the White House was about to send National Guard troops to the border with Mexico to crack down on immigrants entering the country illegally. Over the weekend, though, President Trump suddenly started hammering on immigration as a central priority, leading to the administration’s vague, then concrete, announcement about strengthening the southern border.

At the daily press briefing on Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen outlined the administration’s proposal. After she did so, a reporter asked a key question: Why now? Continue reading “The administration’s rationale for urgent border action doesn’t hold up”