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President Donald Trump went to New York on July 28, 2017 to speak about the fight against gangs, especially the violent gang known as MS-13.

President Donald Trump, in a speech about the brutality of MS-13 gang members and his administrations resolve to deport criminal immigrants, claimed it wasnt until he came along that border crossings went down.

"You know, the border is down 78 percent. Under past administrations, the border didnt go down, it went up. But if it went down 1 percent, it was like this was a great thing. Down 78 percent," Trump said in New York on July 28. "And, in fact, the southern border of Mexico, we did them a big favor -- believe me.They get very little traffic in there anymore, because they know they're not going to get through the border to the United States. So that whole group has been incredible, led by General (John) Kelly."

Trump congratulated Kelly for doing "an incredible job" as secretary of Homeland Security, and at a July31 Cabinet meeting the first for Kelly as Trump's new chief of staff reiterated his pride for reductions in illegal immigration.

"As you know, the border was a tremendous problem, and theyre close to 80 percent stoppage. And even the president of Mexico called me they said their southern border, very few people are coming because they know theyre not going to get through our border, which is the ultimate compliment," Trump said.

Based on past statements Trump has made, his remarks that "the border is down 78 percent" refer to apprehensions of immigrants trying to enter the country illegally. But calculations of different time periods do not show a 78 percent decline.

The claim that under past administrations apprehensions did not go down is not accurate.

The border is down 78 percent

Trump uses different timeframes to make a case that illegal immigration is down. He has looked at year-over-year March border apprehension data to say theres been a 64 percent decline; compared February 2017 numbers to the election month, November 2016, to say its gone down 61 percent; and said there was a 40 percent decline from January, the month he was inaugurated, to February.

Where does the 78 percent come from? We asked the White House but did not get a response.

From June 2016 to June 2017, apprehensions at the southwest border went down 53 percent.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection data also show that from November to June (latest available figures), apprehensions by border patrol agents declined about 66 percent. From January to June, it declined 49 percent. From Trumps first full month in office, February, to June, it went down 14 percent.

And though they remain low, the number of apprehensions actually picked up in May and in June.

As the Washington Posts Fact Checker noted, Trumps claim of apprehensions nearing 80 percent is clearer when comparing cherry-picked figures: the highest point in fiscal year 2017 (November) to the lowest point (April). That yields a 76.4 percent decline.

The border didnt go down, it went up

Trump also claimed, "Under past administrations, the border didnt go down, it went up. But if it went down 1 percent, it was like this was a great thing."

In fact, apprehensions have gone down under past administrations.

Unauthorized immigration also fell dramatically during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, said Christopher Wilson, deputy director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center.

Analyses of monthly and annual apprehension statistics show declines for both Bush and Obamas administrations.

"No matter how you look at it, Trump is far from the first U.S. president to preside over big drops in unauthorized immigration," Wilson said.

Apprehension rates at the southern border have plummeted since the 1980s. In 1986 there were 1.6 million apprehensions about 1.2 million more than in 2016.

The decline hasnt been as steady, however, as there have been increases and decreases over the years.

During the 1980s, there was an annual average of 1 million border patrol apprehensions at the southwest border. During the Obama administration, the average was below 500,000.

FactCheck.org also pointed out that apprehensions declined 75 percent from fiscal years 2000 to 2016.

Our ruling

Referring to border apprehensions, Trump said, "The border is down 78 percent. Under past administrations, the border didnt go down, it went up."

Calculations of the latest figures available from U.S. Customs and Border Protection do not show a 78 percent decline in apprehensions. The closest number to that would be based on cherry-picked numbers of the highest number of apprehensions in November to the lowest number, in April.

Though there have been fluctuations over the years in the number of apprehensions, they certainly have gone down under past administrations.

We rate Trumps claim False.

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2017-08-03 14:02:57 UTC

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"The border is down 78 percent. Under past administrations, the border didnt go down -- it went up."

Donald Trump

President of the United States

in a speech

Friday, July 28, 2017

2017-07-28

Excerpt from:
False: Trump's claim about illegal immigration under past administrations - PolitiFact

Deporting the countrys estimated 11 million illegal immigrants would cost nearly $125 billion, but allowing them to remain in the U.S. could cost taxpayers far more, according to a new report being released Thursday by a think tank that wants to see stricter immigration limits.

Steven A. Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, crunched the numbers and found that the current population of illegal immigrants will drain nearly $750 billion from taxpayers over their lifetimes amounting to six times the deportation costs.

Sometimes people say look, we couldnt deport everybody because its prohibitively expensive, Mr. Camarota said. But if your only concern is fiscal cost, its pretty clear that letting them stay is a hell of a lot more expensive.

The researcher said he doesnt actually support a mass deportation of all illegal immigrants, but said its important to spark a conversation about costs and benefits as President Trump vows to step up removals of illegal immigrants who already in the U.S.

The crux of Mr. Camarotas analysis is the nature of illegal immigrants, who are far more likely to be low-skilled, less-educated workers than the native-born population. Though they also dont have access to some services and benefits reserved for citizens and legal residents, they do get other benefits, such as education.

A report last year by the National Academy of Sciences helped put a dollar figure on the lifetime costs and benefits of immigrants, based on levels of education.

SEE ALSO: Trump kept at arms length on border wall decisions

Mr. Camarota adjusted that study for illegal immigrants and concluded that those with advanced degrees are a $424,000 boon to the U.S. over their lifetime, but those who dropped out of high school are a $173,000 drain. Overall, it works out to a net cost to taxpayers of nearly $63,000 per illegal immigrant.

Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute, said that may not take into account the age of arrival. If an immigrant with less than a high school education arrives before age 24, he can often end up having a positive effect for taxpayers, the analyst said.

Mr. Camarotas study also focused only on fiscal calculations and did not account for economic effects such as how the drop in millions of low-skilled workers would affect certain industries, and thus Americans wages and prices they pay.

A study last year by the American Action Forum concluded that deporting all illegal immigrants and stopping unauthorized newcomers would sap the economy of $1 trillion.

The AAF also said the costs of deporting the universe of illegal immigrants would take 20 years and cost $100 to $300 billion potentially much higher than Mr. Camarotas assumptions.

The AAF said the high estimate would happen if ICE has to send its fugitive operations teams out to arrest all of the illegal immigrants.

Mr. Camarota, though, took the average dollar amount for deportations in 2016 and put the cost at $10,854 per person, or $124.1 billion for the 11 million total. Using numbers from 2012, when authorities set a record for deportations while spending less, the total came to under $6,000 per deportation, or $67.6 billion for the total population.

Deportations have ticked up under President Trump, but the rise of sanctuary cities and of migrants choosing to fight their cases every step of the way in immigration courts is making each deportation more expensive as well.

Mr. Trump has asked for a surge in new detention beds to hold illegal immigrants, and for 1,000 new officers next year to boost the deportation force.

Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan told The Washington Times last week that his agency wont surpass the 2012 record for deportations this year, but were going to get there in the future.

Original post:
Illegal immigrants cost taxpayers nearly $750 billion over lifetime: Report - Washington Times

This article first appeared on the Cato Institute site.

The recent deaths of ten illegal immigrants in San Antonio, Texas, are a gruesome example of the human costs of severe immigration restrictions.

The immigrants wanted to be smuggled into the United States and, presumably, paid somebody for that service.

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They had no way to enter lawfully because the United States government allows in few temporary migrants to work in a handful of occupations and there is essentially no green card category for low skilled workers.

Many of these people face the choice of continued poverty in their home countries or taking a risk at a better life working in the American black market.

Police work at the crime scene after eight illegal immigrants smuggled into the United States were found dead inside a sweltering 18-wheeler trailer parked behind a Walmart store in San Antonio, Texas, U.S. July 23, 2017. Ray Whitehouse/reuters

Attempting to work in the United States is risky and sometimes leads to deaths because of immigration enforcement. And more enforcement will result in more deaths.

These immigrants did make the choice to break American immigration laws but it does not follow that they are the ones to blame for their own deaths, despite what some restrictionists think. Immigration laws are primarily designed to stop Americans from voluntarily hiring, contracting, or selling to willing foreigners.

If the immigration laws were concerned primarily with protecting the rights of Americans and those illegal immigrants who died in the Texas heat intended to do harm, had serious criminal records, or there was another excellent reason to think they would have hurt people here, then their deaths could be a defensible cost of a rational system that does more good than harm.

At the very minimum, one could claim that the law that incentivized them to enter the black market at great risk was intended to protect people. But nobody familiar with our immigration laws or the net-positive effect of immigrants on Americans can make that argument with a straight face.

These illegal immigrants died because of an international labor market regulation.

Those who die from the heat in shipping containers are only a fraction of all deaths crossing the border. From 1998 through the end of 2016, 6,915 people died crossing the Southwest border.

The number of deaths is somewhat up over that time even though the number of apprehensions is way down meaning that the inflow of illegal immigrants does not primarily drive the number of deaths (Figure 1).

If the number of border crossers doesnt determine the number of deaths, what does?

We have a clue in the fact that the number of apprehensions per border death is way down from about one death for every 6,000 apprehensions in 1998 to about one death for every 1,000 apprehensions in 2016 (Figure 2).

That means it is much more dangerous. A greater proportion of border crossers die as the number of Border Patrol agents increases, which is evidence that more immigration enforcement leads to more deaths.

Figure 1

Customs and Border Protection.

Figure 2

Customs and Border Protection.

This is not surprising as research shows more border enforcement leads to more smuggling and higher smuggling prices both of which increase the riskiness of crossing and, for instance, dying in a shipping container in the Texas summer.

The governments primary means of halting illegal immigration is through deterrence creating so much fear in the minds of would-be illegal immigrants that they do not even try to enter.

However, deterrence does not work on everybody. One effect of so much deterrence is that some people try different and riskier ways of entering the United States, such as in a shipping container in the Southwest in the heat of summer. The result is more danger and more death.

Those extra deaths, tragic as they are, might be worth it if the immigration laws save more lives in the United States by preventing criminals or terrorists from entering but they clearly do not, and few serious people are trying to make that case.

The deaths of people who mean no harm to others is a predictable result of immigration laws intended to protect the American labor markets, culture, or the other justification de jour . Its time that people start weighing human cost when considering legal reforms.

Alex Nowrasteh is the immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institutes Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.

See the rest here:
The High Cost in Human Lives of Strictly Limiting Immigration - Newsweek

"As you know, the border was a tremendous problem and now close to 80 percent stoppage." President Trump, remarks at a Cabinet meeting, July 31, 2017

"You know, the border's down 78 percent. Under past administrations, the border didn't go down, it went up. But if it went down 1 percent, there was like this was a great thing. Down 78 percent." Trump, speech in New York, July 28, 2017

Curbing illegal immigration is a major promise by President Donald Trump, and he frequently touts successes in doing so. While Southwest border crossings have, indeed, declined as a result of Trump's rhetoric, it's not nearly as dramatic as 78 or 80 percent. Moreover, Trump now says illegal immigration went up under previous administrations which is false.

Let's dig in.

The Facts

Border activity bucked seasonal trends in the fall and winter of 2016. Usually, there's a seasonal lull through winter months, before apprehensions of undocumented immigrants start climbing back up. Apprehensions tend to peak from March to May, before coming down again in the late summer and through the fall.

Yet in fall 2016, apprehensions kept increasing. People rushed to enter the country, which was an indication that Trump's rhetoric may have sent a message to people who had planned to cross the border from Mexico, to do so before the election. Experts say Trump's anti-illegal-immigration rhetoric played a role.

After November 2016, the number of apprehensions and people "deemed inadmissible" at the border declined rapidly. In April 2017, the monthly number of apprehensions and people deemed inadmissible reached the lowest point since at least 2000, Customs and Border Protection data show.

Since April, however, apprehensions started climbing again. This increase is consistent with seasonal trends.

It's unclear exactly what data Trump is using to claim a decline of up to 80 percent in border crossings. The White House did not respond to our inquiry.

His figure is consistent with the change in apprehensions data from the highest point in fiscal 2017 (November 2016, at 47,210) to the lowest point (April 2017, at 11,126), which is a 76.4 percent decline. That is a cherry-picked figure that shows the biggest possible decline in a given fiscal year - including the months before he took office. When you compare the data from his first full month in office (February 2017) with the latest data (June 2017), the decline is between 8 and 14 percent.

Another way to look at this data is using year-over-year trends. From June 2016 to June 2017, the number of people apprehended or deemed inadmissible declined 52.6 percent. As FactCheck.org noted, it's still a significant decline, but not as high as 80 percent.

Clearly, monthly figures are quite susceptible to cherry-picking.

Southwest border apprehensions have steadily declined since their peak at more than 1.6 million people in fiscal 2000. There have been temporary spikes since 2000 most recently, there was an uptick in apprehensions of Central American unaccompanied children and their families in 2016, after a significant drop in 2015. The fiscal 2016 annual apprehensions are back down to early-1970s levels.

So Trump is incorrect that "under past administrations, the border didn't go down, it went up," and that "the border was a tremendous problem" before his administration.

There are many reasons for this decline, including economic and work conditions on both sides of the border. In recent years, there has been a shift in border migration. The number of Mexicans caught trying to cross the border illegally is dropping, and the number of families and children fleeing rampant violence and crime in Central America is increasing.

The Pinocchio Test

When Trump debuted this talking point, we awarded just One Pinocchio for his use of CBP data. He was largely correct about the large declines, but his apples-to-oranges method led to numbers that were slightly off.

But apprehensions are going up again. His figure now reflects the biggest possible decline even though it measures figures from before he became president, and does not use the most up-to-date data. While monthly and annual figures are susceptible to cherry-picking, the decline under his presidency is as low as 8 percent, and the decline in June 2017 compared with June 2016 is 52.6 percent. That places his claim at the Three-Pinocchio range.

Then this talking point spins out of control when Trump falsely says border activity actually went up, not down, before his administration. In reality, illegal border crossings are back down to early-1970s levels, and apprehensions have steadily declined since their peak in 2000, with temporary upticks here and there. Trump earns Four Pinocchios.

Four Pinocchios

Read the original:
Fact check: Trump's claim illegal immigration went up in past - MyAJC

Federal immigration officers apprehended 650 illegal immigrants last week as part of an operation that targeted people who had been ordered to leave the country, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Tuesday.

Officers with ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations team arrested 73 family unit members, 120 unaccompanied minors, and 457 others from July 23-26.

The 650 arrestees had previously been given a final order of removal from a federal immigration judge, or had no appeals or motions to reopen their case, but had not left.

"Illegally entering the United States as a family unit or UAC does not protect individuals from being subject to the immigration laws of this country," ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan said in a statement. "I urge anyone considering making the dangerous and unlawful journey to the United States: Please do not take this risk. Ultimately, if you have no basis to remain in the United States, you will be identified, apprehended and returned to your home country."

More than 100 of those arrested had criminal convictions on their records, in addition to being unlawfully present in the U.S.

The border operation was launched in January 2016 and again in February 2016 as a way to address a spike in the number of unaccompanied minors and family units arriving at the southern border.

See more here:
Feds arrest 650 illegal immigrants who were ordered to leave the country - Washington Examiner