[ad_1]
But his speech at a small business event in Washington contained several factual inaccuracies.
Here is what Trump said, and what the reality is.
Trump said the family separations at the border are “a result of Democrat-supported loopholes in our federal laws” that he said could be easily changed.
“These are crippling loopholes that cause family separation, which we don’t want,” Trump said.
The reality: Trump’s administration made a decision to prosecute 100% of adults caught crossing the border illegally even if they came with children, and thus are separating parents from their kids at the border with no clear plan to reunite them after the parents return from jail and court proceedings.
The administration has long wanted to roll back a law unanimously passed under President George W. Bush and a court settlement dating back decades but most recently affirmed under the Obama administration — citing those two provisions as “loopholes.” Both were designed to protect immigrant children from dangers like human trafficking and to provide minimum standards for their care, including turning them over to the Department of Health and Human Services for resettlement within three days of arrest, as opposed to being held in lengthy detention, and dictating that children with their families also cannot be held in detention or jail-like conditions longer than three weeks.
The administration has complained the laws make it harder to immediately deport or reject immigrants at the border, and that they are not able to detain families indefinitely.
False claim: Thousands of judges
Trump said his administration was hiring “thousands and thousands” of immigration judges, that the US already has “thousands” of immigration judges and that other countries don’t have immigration judges.
In reality, there the Justice Department’s immigration courts division has 335 judges nationwide, with more than 100 more judges budgeted for, according to a DOJ spokesman.
Because of a massive backlog in the immigration courts, it can take years for those cases to work their way to completion, and many immigrants are allowed to work and live in the US in the meantime, putting down roots. The funding for immigration courts and judges has increased only modestly over the years as funding and resources for enforcement have increased dramatically. A proposal from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to address the family separation issue would double the number of judges to 750.
Trump’s comments Tuesday echoed remarks he made last month. In a May Fox News interview, he claimed the United States was “essentially the only country that has judges” to handle immigration cases. But that is incorrect.
False claim: Virtually all immigrants disappear
Trump also claimed falsely that when immigrants are let into the country to have their cases heard by a court, they virtually all go into hiding.
“And by the way, when we release the people, they never come back to the judge, anyway. They’re gone,” Trump said. “Do you know if a person comes in and puts one foot on our ground, it’s essentially, ‘Welcome to America, welcome to our country.’ You never get them out because they take their name, they bring the name down, they file it, then they let the person go. … Like 3% come back.”
In reality, the number of immigrants who don’t show up to court proceedings is far lower. And many of the immigrants released from detention are given monitoring devices such as ankle bracelets to ensure they return.
Advocates for immigrants attribute some of the missed hearings to often not receiving a court notice mailed to an old address or not having an attorney who can adequately explain the process to the child. Studies have shown that with legal advice and guidance, immigrants are far more likely to show up for hearings and have their claims ultimately be successful.
False claim: Countries are sending bad eggs to the US
Trump said that countries deserve to be punished for illegal immigration, and that they “send” bad eggs to the US.
“They send these people up, and they’re not sending their finest,” Trump said.
He continued: ‘When countries abuse us by sending people up — not their best — we’re not going to give any more aid to those countries.”
False Claim: Mexico isn’t helping the US
Mexico, Trump said, “does nothing for us.”
Mexico is also apprehending tens of thousands of Central Americans before they reach the US. According to the data, Mexico intercepted 173,000 Central Americans in fiscal year 2015, 151,000 in fiscal year 2016 and just under 100,000 in fiscal year 2017.
In the past two years, Mexico has lagged behind the US in apprehensions, but Migration Policy Institute President Andrew Selee, an expert on Mexican policy, said that could be due to a number of factors including smugglers successfully changing their routes to avoid detection or relations with Trump.
CNN’s Catherine Shoichet and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
Source link