Here we look at some of the false, misleading and unsupported claims the president has made about immigration in seven speeches over 12 days, from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Missoula, Montana.
Trump Stump Speeches: Immigration
Issues: immigration
Graphic Photos Falsely Linked to ‘Caravan’
Q: Are the viral photos of Mexican police being “brutalized” by Central American immigrants accurate?
A: No. Those images are old and unrelated to the group of immigrants seeking to come to the U.S.
Ad Stretches Facts to Paint Heitkamp as Liberal ‘Rubber Stamp’
A TV ad attacking Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp stretches some facts to paint the incumbent North Dakota senator as a “rubber stamp” for the “Washington liberal agenda.”
A Rally Filled with Repeats
Trump’s August speech in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, was packed with familiar factual distortions.
Video: Rep. Ellison on Trump’s ‘Travel Ban’
This week’s video from CNN’s Jake Tapper and FactCheck.org explains Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison’s tweet that the Supreme Court “ratified Donald Trump’s ‘total and complete shutdown’ of Muslims entry into the United States.”
Partisan Websites Spin Mexican Campaign Rhetoric
Q: Did the front-runner in the presidential race in Mexico call for an “invasion” of migrants to the U.S.?
A: No. Andrés Manuel López Obrador pledged to “defend migrants … who of necessity have to leave their villages.”
Trump’s ‘Travel Ban’ Doesn’t Affect All Muslims
Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison tweeted that the Supreme Court “ratified Donald Trump’s ‘total and complete shutdown’ of Muslims entry into the United States.” That is a Trump quote from the presidential campaign. But his actual executive actions didn’t go that far.
Is Illegal Immigration Linked to More or Less Crime?
President Donald Trump said it’s “not true” that immigrants in the U.S. illegally are “safer than the people that live in the country,” providing several crime statistics he claimed represented the “toll of illegal immigration.” Sen. Bernie Sanders made the opposite claim, saying: “I understand that the crime rate among undocumented people is actually lower than the general population.”
Video: Nielsen’s Policy Distortion
This video from CNN’s Jake Tapper and FactCheck.org explains how Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen distorted the facts when she tweeted that the Trump administration does “not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.”
More Bogus Border Claims
During the ongoing family-separation controversy, President Donald Trump and others have made false or misleading statements on several immigration issues.