This is part of a post by Robert Reich on the hate being spread by Donald Trump and Stephan Miller:
Trump’s chief bigot, Stephen Miller, said on Fox News this month that immigrants to the United States bring problems that extend through generations.
“With a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful,” Miller claimed. “You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”
In fact, the data show just the opposite. The children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of most immigrants are models of upward mobility in America.
In a new paper, Princeton’s Leah Boustan, Stanford’s Ran Abramitzky, Elisa Jácome of Princeton, and Santiago Pérez of UC Davis used millions of father-son pairs spanning more than a century of U.S. history to show that immigrants today are no slower to move into the middle class than immigrants were a century ago.
In fact, no matter when their parents came to the U.S. or what country they came from, children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than their U.S.-born peers. . . .
Trump is also threatening to strip U.S. citizenship from naturalized migrants “who undermine domestic tranquillity.” He plans to deport foreigners deemed to be “non-compatible with Western Civilization” and aims to detain even more migrants in jail or in warehouses — in the U.S. or in other countries — without due process.
In addition to the unconstitutionality of such actions, they stir up the worst nativist and racist impulses in America — blaming and scapegoating entire groups of people.
As they make their case to crack down on illegal and legal immigration, Miller and Trump have targeted Minnesota’s Somali community — seizing on an investigationinto fraud that took place in pockets of the Somali diaspora in the state to denounce the entire community, which Trump has called “garbage.”
Let’s be clear. Apart from Native Americans, we are all immigrants — all descended from “foreigners.” Some of our ancestors came here eagerly; some came because they were no longer safe in their homelands; some came enslaved.
Almost all of us are mongrels — of mixed nationalities, mixed ethnicities, mixed races, mixed creeds. While we maintain our own traditions, we also embrace the ideals of this nation. . . .
Miller and Trump want to fuel bigotry. Like dictators before him, Trump’s road to tyranny is paved with stones hurled at “them.” His entire project depends on hate.
America is better than Trump and his chief bigot.
We won’t buy their hate. To the contrary, we’ll call out bigots. We won’t tolerate intolerance. We’ll protect hardworking members of our community. We’ll alert them when ICE is lurking.
We will not succumb to the ravings of a venomous president who wants us to hate each other — or his bigoted sidekick.
The following is part of an article by Michele Norris at MSNBC:
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is making an unrealistic pledge to create a “100% American workforce” in agriculture.
One hundred percent American is a surefire applause line for the Trump faithful, as evidenced by the applause Rollins received at a recent press conference where she shared the idea. However, it shows an unfortunate lack of understanding of the current state of play for farmers who are struggling mightily to find a reliable workforce in all corners of America.
The numbers tell the story. There are more than 2.6 million people working on farms in the United States. That includes 1 million workers for hire who are primarily immigrants. According to recent KFF data, 1 in 10 workers are Hispanic and two-thirds are noncitizen immigrants. While a small percent hold work authorization or a green card with protective status, almost half lack formal work authorization. . . .
“Ultimately the answer on this is automation, also some reform within the current governing structure,” Rollins said. “And then also, when you think about it, there are 34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program. There are plenty of workers in America, but we just have to make sure we are not compromising today, especially in the context of everything we are thinking about right now.”
Rollins said there would be no amnesty for farm workers and that the mass deportations would continue “in a strategic and intentional way, as we move our workforce towards more automation and towards a 100% American workforce.”
Rollins also noted that given the number of able-bodied adults on Medicaid, “we should be able to do that fairly quickly.”
Unsurprisingly, members of the farming community have openly scoffed at this idea.
Michael Marsh, president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, told Brownfield Ag News, “I just can’t imagine somebody from New York City wanting to take a job in New York to milk a cow in order to qualify for their Medicaid. To me that just doesn’t make sense.”
“If a Medicaid recipient is required to work I can guarantee you that farm work would be one of the last jobs a Medicaid recipient would seek,” said Tom Vilsack, who was the secretary of agriculture for 12 years under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. “It is physically demanding and at times dangerous. The notion … suggests a misunderstanding of who is on Medicaid and why. I think the secretary will find that being ‘able-bodied’ does not mean that any individual can work in the difficult conditions that farmworkers face with reference to the nature of the work and the weather conditions (both hot and cold) in which the work is performed.” . . .
The agriculture sector is ranked one of the most dangerous in America. Whether it’s picking melons, detasseling corn, harvesting sugar beets or yanking lettuce from the ground, farm work is grueling and perilous. The people who work in the fields face heat stress, pesticide exposure, the risk of chemical burns, repetitive motion injuries, joint damage and hearing loss. (That last thing might confuse city folks, but anyone who has been within earshot of a tractor or a combine harvester or the gigantic towers that dry grain or corn understands why the decibel level causes danger.) The machinery alone presents unique hazards, with tractor rollovers and gigantic blades and fast-moving conveyor belts. And the current uptick in ICE raids has only made agriculture labor more perilous, as we saw in reports over the weekend of the death of Jaime Alanis Garcia, a farmworker who fell 30 feet off a building when he was allegedly trying to avoid federal agents during a raid at a cannabis farm in Ventura County, California. . . .
Harvest season is fast approaching. For some crops it’s already here, and nature is not patient. Produce must be pulled on a timely basis before the bugs or the sun reduce its viability and value. . . .
Here’s one thing that has 100% certainty: With no realistic plan to replace the farmworkers who are being rounded up or who are too afraid to show up for work, we are all going to reap a rough harvest in coming months. The workers. The farmers. The retailers and the consumers. Think about that next time you’re in the produce aisle.
The following post is by Stephen Moore and Richard Vedder in The Washington Post:
Most Americans would agree that immigrants have made a positive contribution to the U.S. economy throughout our nation’s history.
But legal immigration might be more vital to our economy today than ever before. That is the result of an unavoidable demographic reality: Like that of every other industrialized nation, our population is aging quickly. Roughly 10,000 baby boomers are retiring every day, but nowhere near that number of native-born Americans are entering the workforce.
This raises a challenge to the Trump administration’s goal of achieving and maintaining 3 percent economic growth, increasing wages and lowering federal budget deficits. To achieve that level of growth, we will need two things: an increasing labor force and higher productivity on the part of working Americans. Artificial intelligence and robotics will provide a profound boost to productivity — just as farm tractors, computers and the internet propelled growth. But we will still need smart and willing workers because our country’s declining birth rates deplete the pool of available domestic labor.
Our group, Unleash Prosperity, examined the economic and demographic effects of immigrants on American society, using the latest census data. We found that the U.S. economy is already super dependent on immigrants. Over the past decade, just under half of all new civilian workers, almost 6 million, have been immigrants. The majority of them entered the country legally.
Here is an even more jaw-dropping statistic on the need for expanded visas: Because of our inverted population pyramid, immigrants will contribute virtually all of the net increase in the American workforce over the next two decades. Without continued immigration, the U.S. workforce would start shrinking.
One underappreciated advantage of immigrants is that a disproportionate number come to this country at the start of their working years. They are twice as likely to be in the prime working ages of 18 to 64 than native-born Americans. Only a small percentage of immigrants arrive in the United States during their retirement years. We are mostly importing instant workers. This is why immigrants are a valuable demographic safety valve.
Many Trump voters worry that immigrants might take jobs from U.S.-born blue-collar workers, and there is no doubt that in some occupations there is a crowding-out effect.
But economy-wide, there is no evidence that natives lose jobs because of immigrants. There are nearly 8 million job openings in the U.S. today, and that number might increase in the years ahead as retirements accelerate.
Our study also found that today’s immigrants — and their children — are prodigious creators of jobs and businesses. Most of these businesses are small, with a handful of employees, often family members.
But some are astonishingly successful, hiring thousands of American workers. We calculated that just under half of the Fortune 500 companies in the United States were started by an immigrant or the child of an immigrant.
One prominent example of the United States importing the best and brightest is found in sports. The last seven MVP awards in the National Basketball Association — the award for being the best player in the world — have gone to foreign-born athletes, including Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece), Nikola Jokic (Serbia), Joel Embiid(Cameroon) and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Canada).
Most immigrants won’t be superstar athletes or shooting rockets off to Mars. But most will contribute and help ensure that the United States retains its global supremacy in the decades ahead.
If we are smart enough to let them come.
The chart above reflects the results of the YouGov Poll -- done on July 3rd of a nationwide sample of 2,983 adults.
The following is part of an excellent article by Joshua Zeitz at Politico.com:
Trump contends that the amendment does not apply to immigrants. His argument rests on two conceits:
First, that the text of the amendment specifically limits birthright citizenship to “persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” — which, conservatives argue, does not include immigrant children, as they owe allegiance to a foreign power and are not fully subject to U.S. sovereign authority.
Second, as the president explained on Friday, he believes the framers intended only to confer citizenship on freedmen (retroactively) and their children (prospectively). In effect, they were attempting a constitutional repudiation of the infamous Dred Scott decision, in which the Court in 1857 denied that Black persons could be citizens.
We know both of these arguments are shambolic, because the framers told us so.
Senator Jacob Howard, a Republican from Michigan, drafted the birthright citizenship language and was clear in his intent. “This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States,” he explained.
But Howard qualified his explanation. “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.”
At first blush, it would seem that meant to exclude the children of foreign-born immigrants from enjoying birthright citizenship. But the Senate debate makes clear he and his colleagues meant only to exclude the children of foreign diplomats and officials in the United States on business.
In a key exchange, Senator Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania fretted that the amendment would expose the United States to mass demographic upheaval, specifically by making immigrant children citizens. He worried particularly about “Gypsie” (or Roma) immigrants in his home state and a small but growing population of Chinese immigrants in California. In response, John Conness, a senator from California, who supported the bill, agreed with Howard that the citizenship clause applied to immigrants, affirming that the amendment “relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens. … I am in favor of doing so. … We are entirely ready to accept the provision proposed in this constitutional amendment, that the children born here of Mongolian parents shall be declared by the Constitution of the United States to be entitled to civil rights and to equal protection before the law with others.”
Setting aside their crude racial determinism, the exchange makes clear that Howard and other Republicans intended the amendment to apply to all persons born in the U.S., not just freedmen. Cowan was the only Republican senator to vote against the amendment, specifically because of his concerns over birthright citizenship and immigration. In other words, even the amendment’s opponents understood its meaning and intent. . . .
There was essentially no disagreement about the children of immigrants, who were understood to qualify for citizenship.
And the Supreme Court agreed in a landmark 1898 decision, United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898).
Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents who were barred from naturalization under the Chinese Exclusion Act. After a trip abroad, he was denied re-entry to the U.S., prompting a legal battle over whether he was a citizen. In a 6–2 decision, the court ruled that the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to nearly all individuals born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ nationality or immigration status — establishing a foundational precedent for birthright citizenship that remains in place today. . . .
The history is clear on this point. If the Supreme Court’s conservative majority actually believes in originalism, that means the legality of birthright citizenship is a matter of history — and the history is undeniable. Lawmakers on both sides of the issue acknowledged that the Fourteenth Amendment would extend birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants.
Historically, Border Patrol’s El Paso sector — which includes all 180 miles of New Mexico’s border with Mexico and 84 miles of El Paso and Hudspeth counties in West Texas — has had among the fewest migrant deaths across the southern border.
That changed in late December 2022, according to an investigation by The Texas Tribune and Source New Mexico, when the city of El Paso joined forces with Gov. Greg Abbott to participate in his signature border mission, called Operation Lone Star.
By 2024, the El Paso sector had become the deadliest place for migrants to cross along the entire U.S.-Mexico border.
From January 2023 to August 2024, 299 human remains were reported in the El Paso sector, the most of any sector along the southern border, according to the most recent data available from federal government data. That’s more than double the number of cases reported during the 20 months prior, when 122 remains were recorded before El Paso had adopted Operation Lone Star.
Since El Paso joined Texas’ border mission in 2022, migrant remains discovered in the El Paso sector have increased every year, even as they have declined in every other part of the border. . . .
Though many factors determine where and when someone crosses an international border — including federal immigration policies, organized crime and natural disasters — experts and advocates say any policy that pushes migrants into the desert will likely cost lives.
Immigrant rights groups and researchers say more migrants are taking deadlier routes to enter the country since Texas launched Operation Lone Star in 2021 — flooding the border with state troopers, National Guard and miles of razor wire — as the federal government’s ever-changing immigration policies have delayed or blocked migrants who want to claim asylum in the U.S.
“Any state lawmaker or local leader should be aware that these policies come at a human cost,” said Aimée Santillán, a policy analyst at the Hope Border Institute, an immigrant rights advocacy group in El Paso. “So anyone that decides to approach this type of enforcement is making a decision that they can live with these deaths.”
I've heard some Trump voters say he wasn't really serious about it. Others say he was only talking about those who have committed crimes. Both are wrong!
All one has to do is look at some of Trump's fist picks for government jobs to know that.
One of his first picks was Tom Homan to be his "border czar". Homan was the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Trump's first term, and the man responsible for the separation of children from their parents. He has no empathy, and will assume the task of massive deportation with a heavy hand.
Then Trump nominated Stephen Miller as his deputy chief of staff. Miller is the originator of the massive deportation idea. He has said he wants to deport at least a million immigrants each year, and has even floated the idea of deporting some immigrants that have legal status.
Finishing out the deportation triumvirate is Kristi Noem to be secretary of Homeland Security. She is a weak kneed sycophant who will do whatever Trump wants - no matter how stupid or illegal.
Trump was not joking about the massive deportations. He is serious, and he has appointed the people who are willing and able to carry it out.
It will separate families, lower taxes collected (these immigrants pay billions in taxes), cause a hardship for low-wage and benefit businesses, add at least $80 billion a year to the deficit, and wreck the economy. But it will happen!
CNN lists the many lies Trump is telling about immigrants as he tries to scare Americans into voting for him:
Here is a fact check of at least 28 distinct false claims he has made about immigration in the last two weeks alone, some of which he has repeated over and over.
Harris’ border role: Trump, criticizing Harris, repeatedly claimed that President Joe Biden made her “border czar” and said that “she was in charge of the border.” Biden never made Harris “border czar,” a label the White House has always emphasized is inaccurate, and never put her in charge of border security, a responsibility of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. In reality, Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that prompted their citizens to try to migrate to the United States.
Harris’ border visits: Trump, speaking about Harris and the border, repeated his false claim that “she never even went there.” Harris did go to the border as vice president, in Texas in mid-2021 and then again in Arizona last month; many Republicans had criticized Harris prior to the 2021 visit for not having gone, and some later argued that she didn’t go frequently enough, but the claim that she “never” went has not been true for more than three years.
Harris’ approach to the border: Trump falsely claimed of Harris: “She was saying the other day, ‘Yes, oh yes, we want to have a border.’ The first time she ever said it. She almost threw up when she said it.” This is nonsense; Harris has never said the US shouldn’t have a border, and it’s not even true that “the other day” was the first time she said the US should have a secure border. For example, she said in a television appearance while running for president in 2019: “We have to have a secure border. But I am in favor of saying that we are not going to treat people who are undocumented and cross the border as criminals.”
Harris, migrants and criminals: Trump again falsely described a recently released set of statistics about immigrants in the US with homicide convictions, claiming again that the figures are specifically about people who entered the country during the Biden-Harris administration: “It came out that 13,099 were let in, during their administration – they tried to say longer, wrong: over the last three-and-a-half years – 13,000-plus people came in: murderers.”
In reality, the Department of Homeland Security and independent experts have noted that these figures are about people who entered the country over decades, including during Trump’s own administration, not just under Biden and Harris. You can read more here.
The people on the ICE non-detained list: Trump repeated his false claim that “under Kamala Harris, 13,099 illegal alien convicted murderers are roaming free in the United States.” The Department of Homeland Security has made clear that this figure includes people who are currently incarcerated in federal, state and local prisons and jails; they are on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement “non-detained” list because they aren’t in the custody of immigration authorities in particular. You can read more here.
A Biden immigration bill and citizenship: Trump denounced an unspecified immigration bill from the Biden administration, falsely claiming “it would have allowed millions of people to become citizens right away.” The bill Biden proposed to Congress at the beginning of his administration in 2021 would have offered a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, but over eight years. And the bipartisan 2024 border bill that Trump helped to kill offered a pathway to citizenship for tens of thousands of immigrants from Afghanistan who arrived in the US with temporary status in the wake of the US withdrawal in 2021, but that’s not “millions,” and, again, it wouldn’t have made them citizens immediately.
Migration and Black unemployment: Trump, arguing that undocumented immigrants are taking the jobs of Black and Hispanic Americans, falsely claimed Saturday of African Americans: “Their unemployment rate is through the roof. Wait ‘til you hear the numbers.” The Black or African American unemployment rate declined in September, to 5.7%. That is only a bit higher than the lowest rate of the Trump presidency, 5.3%, in two months of 2019. It’s also lower than the pre-pandemic February 2020 rate, also under Trump, of 6.1%.
FEMA and migrants: Trump falsely claimed of the Federal Emergency Management Agency: “They have no money. You know where they gave the money? To illegal immigrants coming in.” He also said, “They spent all their funds; they have no funds to take care…”
This is false in two ways. FEMA does have money for the immediate responses to Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, though a string of recent disasters has depleted its disaster relief fund; the fund had about $11 billion remaining as of Wednesday. And FEMA did not give all of its disaster relief money to undocumented people; rather, as mandated by Congress, FEMA also administers an entirely separate pool of money for sheltering migrants.
An immigration chart and migration levels: Trump repeatedly made his false claim that his favorite chart about migration numbers at the southern border – which he had fortunately turned his head to look at when a gunman tried to kill him at a campaign rally in July – has an arrow pointing to “the day I left office,” which, he said, had the lowest level of border crossings “in the recorded history of our country.”
The chart doesn’t show that. In fact, the arrow actually points to April 2020, when Trump still had more than eight months left in his term and global migration had slowed to a trickle because of the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. After hitting a roughly three-year low (not an all-time low) in April 2020, migration numbers at the southern border increased each month through the end of Trump’s term.
The number of migrants: Trump, speaking about migration, repeated his false claim that “21 million people came in over the last three years, with them.” Through August, the country had recorded about 10.3 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants during the Biden-Harris administration, including millions who were rapidly expelled from the country; even adding in so-called “gotaways” who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2 million, there’s no way the total is “21 million.”
The border wall: Trump repeated his false claim that he built “571 miles of wall” on the southern border. That’s a significant exaggeration; official government data shows 458 miles were built under Trump – including both wall built where no barriers had existed before and wall built to replace previous barriers.
Trump’s wall promises: Trump made the false claim about having built “571 miles of wall,” then added an additional false claim that the number of miles he had wanted to add to the wall, before the Biden administration halted construction, was “much more than I said I was going to build.” He said, “I was going to add 200 miles more. I didn’t promise to do that, but I thought it would be good.” In reality, when he ran for president in 2015 and 2016, Trump regularly said “we need” 1,000 miles of wall; adding 200 miles to the 458 miles that were built, or even adding the 280 miles the federal government said were planned for construction but not yet built when Trump left office, would be less than he had spoken about building.
Mexico and the wall: Trump, who emphasized during his 2016 campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall, falsely claimed: “Mexico did pay for it.” He added, “You know, they gave us thousands and thousands of soldiers. They paid more.”
Mexico did not pay for the border wall, which was funded solely with billions of dollars in US government funds; the Trump administration directed roughly $16 billion toward the project (though not all of it was spent). While Mexico did deploy thousands of security personnel to thwart migrants heading to the US, Mexico paying for this initiative simply isn’t the same as Mexico paying for the wall.
Immigration judges and other countries: Trump, criticizing the fact that asylum seekers who arrive at the border have access to a US legal process before they are deported, falsely claimed that “No other country has judges at the border.” In reality, the US is far from the only country to let asylum seekers make their case before judges or legal tribunals.
“This statement is patently false,” James Hathaway, then a law professor and Director of the Program in Refugee and Asylum Law at the University of Michigan, told this reporter during Trump’s presidency in response to a previous version of Trump’s claim. “It is completely routine in other countries that, like the U.S., have signed the UN refugee treaties for asylum-seekers to have access to the domestic legal system to make a protection claim (and to be allowed in while the claim is pending).”
The number of US immigration judges: Trump falsely claimed, “We have thousands of judges at the border.” The US had 725 immigration judges nationwide as of the first quarter of the 2024 fiscal year.
Trump’s comments about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, “eating the pets”: Asked at a Univision town hall if he really believes Haitian immigrants in Springfield are eating other residents’ pets, Trump said, “This was just reported. I was just saying what was reported; that’s been reported – and eating other things, too, that they’re not supposed to be. But this is – all I do is report.” He added, “That’s been in the newspapers and reported pretty broadly.”
It has not actually been broadly reported that immigrants in Springfield are eating other residents’ pets. In fact, no news outlet has reported any proof of this having actually happened; Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, acknowledged after promoting such claims in September that although he had heard the claims from his constituents, “it’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.” And when Trump claimed at the presidential debate in September that “in Springfield, they’re eating the dogs…they’re eating the cats….they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” he did not say he was merely citing reports he had seen.
The legal status of immigrants in Springfield: Trump falsely claimed, “They just dropped 30,000 illegal aliens in Springfield, Ohio.”
This is false in more than one way. While we don’t know the immigration status of each and every Haitian immigrant in Springfield, the community is, on the whole, in the country lawfully. The Springfield city website says, “YES, Haitian immigrants are here legally, under the Immigration Parole Program. Once here, immigrants are then eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS).” Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine wrote in a New York Times op-ed about Springfield in September that the Haitian immigrants “are there legally” and that, as a Trump-Vance supporter, he is “saddened” by the candidates’ disparagement of “the legal migrants living in Springfield.”
Second, nobody “dropped” the immigrants in Springfield; the city’s Haitian residents were not sent there by a government resettlement program. Rather, they independently decided to move to the city because of employment opportunities, affordable housing and the presence of a Haitian community, among other factors.
And while there is no official tally of the number of immigrants in Springfield, Trump’s “30,000” figure exceeds local estimates. The website for the city of Springfield says there are an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants in the county that includes Springfield, where the total population is about 138,000. Chris Cook, the county’s health commissioner, said in July that his team estimated the best number was 10,000 to 12,000 Haitian residents in the county.
More about immigrants in Springfield: Trump claimed that immigrants in Springfield are on “probation,” and he added, “Probation is for prisoners.” This is false in two ways.
First, Trump got his terms wrong. Many Haitians came into the country under a Biden-Harris administration parole program – not “probation” – that gives permission to enter the US to vetted participants with US sponsors. And though the word “parole” is most commonly used in the context of criminal prisoners who are let out early on certain conditions, in the context of immigration policy, “parole” does not mean that someone was let out of prison or had ever been in prison.
Rather, as the federal government explains on its website, “The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) allows the secretary of homeland security to use their discretion to parole any noncitizen applying for admission into the United States temporarily for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” The government has used the parole authority in the past to grant entry to certain people fleeing crises in Cuba, Vietnam, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Lebanon and elsewhere.
Venezuela, prisons and migration: Trump falsely claimed, “In Venezuela, many countries, they’re emptying their prisons into our country.” This is false. Trump has never corroborated this claim about Venezuela, let alone “many countries,” and experts have told CNN, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org that they know of no evidence for it.
“We have no evidence that the Venezuelan government is emptying its prisons or mental health institutions to send them outside the country, in other words, to the U.S. or any other country,” Roberto Briceño-León, founder and director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, an independent organization that tracks violence in the country, said in an email to CNN in June, after Trump made similar claims.
Venezuela and migrant buses: Adding another colorful story about Venezuela, Trump falsely claimed that “they take the criminal gangs from Caracas off the streets and they bus them into the United States and drop them.” This is false. There is no evidence of Venezuelan authorities somehow busing gang members into the US.
Migrants and “the Congo”: Trump repeated his false claim that “a huge number” of migrants are “coming out of jails in the Congo,” explaining that this was because foreign countries are deliberately “releasing their prison populations into our country.” Trump and his campaign have never been able to provide any proof for this claim about “the Congo,” and both the Democratic Republic of Congo and the neighboring Republic of Congo told CNN in March that it is false. Experts on both countries also told CNN in March that they had not seen any evidence of Congolese prisons being emptied, let alone evidence of either country somehow having brought ex-prisoners into the US as Trump has claimed.
The world prison population: Trump repeated his false claim that “the prison population all over the world is down, because they put them in our country.” The recorded global prison population increased from October 2021 to April 2024, from at least about 10.77 million people to at least about 10.99 million people, according to the World Prison Population List compiled by experts in the United Kingdom.
“I do a daily news search to see what’s going on in prisons around the world and have seen absolutely no evidence that any country is emptying its prisons and sending them all to the US,” Helen Fair, co-author of the prison population list and research fellow at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London, said in June, when Trump made a similar claim.
Migrants and mental health facilities: Trump repeated his false claim about large numbers of migrants entering the US from mental health facilities foreign governments had deliberately emptied: “They’re coming in, but they’re also coming in largely, in tremendous numbers, coming in, out of mental institutions; they’re emptying out mental institutions, they’re emptying out insane asylums.” Trump’s own campaign hasn’t been able to substantiate these claims, and experts say they have found no evidence for them.
A gang and Colorado: Trump falsely claimed at a rally in Colorado that a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua is “taking over your state,” suggesting that the city of Aurora has been “conquered” and promising to “liberate Colorado” if elected again.
The gang has members in the state, but it has not come close to taking over any town or city – let alone Colorado as a whole. Republican Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman said in a September joint statement, issued with the conservative chair of the city council’s public safety committee, that the gang “has not ‘taken over’ the city” and that problems with the gang “experienced at a select few properties do not apply to the city as a whole or large portions of it.” Coffman noted that the city’s police department had linked 10 people to the gang and arrested eight.
Migrants and towns: Trump, talking about the migrants who have entered the country under Biden and Harris, promised to “rescue…every town across America that has been invaded and conquered,” adding, “They’ve been conquered; they’re conquering the towns.” This is nonsense; no US town has been “conquered” by migrants.
The word “caravan”: Talking about migrant caravans, Trump repeated his false claim that he invented the term: “The caravan. I made up that name too. I’m good at names.” Trump did not come up with the word “caravan,” either in general – the word came to English in the 16th century – or in using it to describe groups of migrants traveling together toward the US border; before he first used it in that context in a 2018 tweet, it had been used by various others in the same context in the days and weeks prior, including in a BuzzFeed News feature article headlined, “A Huge Caravan Of Central Americans Is Headed For The US, And No One In Mexico Dares To Stop Them.”
Central American countries and deportations: Trump repeated his long-debunked story about how Latin American countries including Honduras – he has previously named Guatemala and El Salvador as well – refused to let the US deport criminals back there under President Barack Obama, even refusing to let deportation flights land on their runways. In 2016, Obama’s last calendar year in office, neither Honduras nor the other two countries were on the list of countries that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) considered “recalcitrant” (uncooperative) in accepting the return of their citizens from the US; in the 2016 fiscal year, ICE reported that Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador ranked second, third and fourth for the country of citizenship of people being removed from the US.
Harris and “missing” children: Trump falsely claimed that Harris “lost 325,000 migrant children” and declared that “most of them are dead, in my opinion”; agreeing with a comment from someone in his rally crowd, he added that “all” of them might be dead.
There is no basis for Trump’s claim that even “most” of these children are dead – or for his claim that Harris was responsible for all of the children.
He appeared to be referring to an August report from the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Inspector General, which said ICE reported more than 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children failed to appear as scheduled for immigration court hearings after being released or transferred out of custody between fiscal years 2019 and 2023 – a period that, notably, includes two years and four months under the Trump administration. The report also said that 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children during this period were not given notices to appear in court.
The report said that ICE has “no assurances” these children “are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.” But it did not definitively assert that any of them were being exploited – let alone that most of them are dead, a claim experts say is nonsense.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told CNN in a message this summer: “Long story short, no, there are not 320,000 kids missing. 32,000 kids missed court. That doesn’t mean they’re missing, it means they missed court (either because their sponsor didn’t bring them or they are teenagers who didn’t want to show up). The remaining 291,000 cases mentioned by the OIG are cases where ICE hasn’t filed the paperwork to start their immigration court cases.”
