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Presumably, he will not discuss why he agreed to pass a budget with no wall money and then changed his mind when Fox News and Ann Coulter bitched at him. Presumably he will not discuss how the $1.6 Billion from the last Congress hasn't been spent yet, but getting another $5.6 Billion is a crisis. Or that border crossings are way down....
Presumably he WILL reiterate the lies that his office has said over and over.
**Surely the American people won't let these side-show tactics force them into forgetting that: Trump's emoluments lawsuit is going forward, that Trump's New York investigation into Campaign Finance violations found he violated the law, that the Supreme Court today denied a foreign company's request to ignore the Muller investigation, the the Muller Investigation has found multiple guilty verdicts and pleas.** (This paragraph should have been in sarcasm font.)
Just to get ahead of the lies, USA Today (no liberal bastion) has checked some facts which Very Special Genius has lied about. Repeatedly. (FULL LINK)
►Illegal border crossings are down. Significantly.
In 2000, 1.6 million people were apprehended trying to cross the southern border into the United States. In 2001, 1.3 million were apprehended. In 2018? Less than 400,000. That’s not just a decline. It’s a significant decline.
A
lot of the decline was because of the recession, which dried up jobs
migrants were seeking to fill. But if we’re being fair, apprehension
numbers reached a low of about 310,000 in 2017 in part because of increased border enforcement and fear of Trump and his anti-immigrant policies.
According to data from the Wilson Center, as summarized by The Washington Post,
“The crime rates in U.S. border counties are lower than the average for
similarly sized inland counties, with two exceptions out of 23 total.”
Anti-immigrant
conservatives like to talk about how undocumented immigrants are
supposedly menacing border communities and making border states less
safe. Recently, in a segment with me on CNN, conservative radio host and
Trump supporter Ben Ferguson shouted, “Talk to people in Texas! I’m in
Texas right now! People here … have been killed by illegal immigrants
that come across the border illegally. And you say it’s fearmongering!?”
Yes,
I do. And I’m not the only one. Christopher Wilson, deputy director of
the Wilson Center, told The Post, “There is no doubt the U.S. side (of
the border) is a very safe place.”
►Most undocumented immigrants don’t “sneak” across the border.
The majority of immigrants in the USA without authorization first entered the country legally, and then overstayed their visas. The Center for Migration Studies said in a 2017 report that
crossing the border is not the way “the large majority of persons now
becoming undocumented.” It reported that two-thirds of undocumented
immigrants entered the U.S. legally and then simply overstayed their
visas. If you legitimately are concerned about the issue of undocumented
immigrants, as opposed to just exacerbating and exploiting
fearmongering for political gain, then this is where you would focus —
not the border.
►The White House is lying about terrorists crossing the southern border.
In
an interview on Fox News this weekend, White House press secretary
Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted that “nearly 4,000 known or suspected
terrorists come into our country illegally, and we know that our most
vulnerable point of entry is at our southern border.”
Sanders' careful wording suggests she knew she was more than bending
the truth. Fox News anchor Chris Wallace fact-checked Sanders: “Do you
know where those 4,000 people come, where they are captured? Airports.”
“The
state department says there hasn’t been any terrorists found coming
across the southern border,” Wallace stated. But Sanders kept pressing
the lie, because Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda relies on fact-less
fearmongering.
►Migrant caravans aren’t “sneaking” across the border, either.
If
you care about facts, it’s important to distinguish between illegal
border crossings and migrants lawfully presenting themselves at southern
ports of entry in order to apply for asylum. The simple fact is that
large groups of very visible migrants, such as the main so-called
migrant caravan of people fleeing violence in Central America, are
obviously not trying to “sneak” across the U.S. border. They’re coming
to the border to apply for asylum, which was a completely transparent and lawful process until Trump started changing the rules.
►Drugs entering the USA across the southern border are most often hidden in legal shipments.
Trump has suggested that the flow of heroin into the United States would be stanched by his border wall. He’s right that 90 percent
of heroin enters through the southern border. However, according to the
Drug Enforcement Agency, “illicit drugs are smuggled into the United
States in concealed compartments within passenger vehicles or commingled with legitimate goods on tractor trailers.”
In
other words, a wall wouldn’t stop most heroin from entering the
country. And arguably, resources spent on the wall would divert from
other enforcement mechanisms, such as more officers and technology at
ports of entry to scan vehicles for drugs.
It’s
also noteworthy that in ramping up prosecution of migrants trying to
enter the United States, the Trump administration actually reduced
prosecution of drug traffickers. Last June saw the fewest such
prosecutions in two decades.
►Conservative political figures and think tanks think Trump’s wall is pointless.
What
apparently began as a memory device to help the undisciplined Trump
remember what to thunder about during campaign appearances has turned
into a central bone the president won’t let go of. But there’s a reason
Trump couldn’t get funding for his wall during the past two years of his
presidency when his own party completely controlled both houses of
Congress: They didn’t want it. The New York Times
reports that leading anti-immigration activists are concerned Trump’s
focus on the “relatively ineffectual” wall is distracting from other
strategies they would like prioritized.
For
instance, Republican Rep. Will Hurd, from the border state of
Texas, said in 2017, “I’ve made it clear time and time again that
building a physical wall from sea to shining sea is the most expensive
and least effective way to secure the border.” The conservative Cato Institute has called Trump’s wall idea “impractical, expensive and ineffective.”
One might suspect that more Republicans would speak out against Trump’s
stupid wall idea if they weren’t afraid of alienating the right-wing
GOP base.
►There are already 654 miles of border fencing.
The U.S.-Mexico border is 1,933 miles
long. Of that, 34 percent already has a wall or a fence — in
particular, parts along the areas of the border that are most easily
accessed by people traveling by car or on foot. That’s right, there’s
already a wall along 654 miles of the U.S. border. What’s the rest? Huge
mountains and rivers and vast stretches of land that are privately
owned, which the United States would have to seize through eminent
domain if Trump got his way. Mind you, those areas aren’t completely
open — they’re actively patrolled using sensors and drones and other
technology, the sorts of things experts say actually work.
Here
it’s worth noting that the less than 400,000 people who were trying to
cross the border in 2018 were arrested. They were caught and detained
and deported. Because of our already extremely highly militarized and
aggressive border patrol efforts.
►Americans do not support Trump’s wall.
“The people of our country want it,” Trump said recently. No, they do not. A mid-December poll found that 54 percent of respondents opposed Trump’s wall. That number even crept up slightly by late December. And more than two out of three Americans don’t think the wall should be a political priority. It’s also worth noting that most Americans blame Trump for the government shutdown that he initiated by trying to hold government funding hostage to get his stupid wall.
Americans
don’t support Trump’s wall because they know the truth — that we have a
tough immigration and border enforcement system already working, and
way bigger problems to focus on fixing in our nation.