TRUMP'S “PINOCCHIO” LIES ABOUT U.S. IMMIGRATION

…The Border Wall samples that Trump has toured and inspected.

Trump has no clue beyond “The Wall” for dealing with US immigration issues.

What I’m going to do now, is to put aside the string of false statements of President Trump such as: His policy to overturn Obamacare  because “Obamacare is dead”,  and for his tax cuts which he said “is the biggest tax cut ever”.  Neither of these statements are true.

But the month of May is becoming “immigration month” because the expiration of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and the “caravan” of central Americans moving slowly through Mexico to the border with the United States, plus the omnibus spending bill.  These have shoved immigration back into the national conversation and very much onto President Trump’s demented mind.

What caused all this attention is that Trump is increasingly claiming that Democrats are “uninterested in fixing DACA”.  Like everything else from the president, just because he makes the claim so often, doesn’t make it true.  In fact, it's probably false.

The Democrats and groups of bipartisan lawmakers have offered the president no less than four bargains to fix DACA, a program that Trump thought he terminated. 

So, remember the days of “Chuck and Nancy”?  Back in September, after a White House meeting, these two Democrats told the press that the president had agreed to an outline of an immigration plan that did not include the border wall. That plan fell apart just over a month later when the White House outlined its very conservative priorities for a DACA deal.

Fast forward to January, when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) worked together to develop a bipartisan immigration plan that included a path to citizenship for the Dreamers.  The plan also had a shake-up of the visa program and a year of funding for Trump’s border wall. The two bipartisan senators thought they had a deal with Trump until they attended a meeting at the White House where they were blindsided by the GOP immigration hard-liners.  It was also when the president’s made the derogatory comment about Africa's “s--t hole countries.”

With the Graham-Durbin deal in total tatters and the possibility of a government shutdown looming, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) met the president for lunch. Schumer said he offered Trump upward of $20 billion to build a border wall in exchange for the DACA deal. Trump declined, and the next day the government shut down.

The government reopened after the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) agreed to allow an immigration debate.

Then in mid-February, a group of bipartisan senators offered a new compromise and it was complete with $25 billion for the border Wall and border security. The plan attracted 54 votes, including eight Republicans, but it failed to overcome a filibuster after the White House then pushed to stop it from being passed. The White House’s preferred path of action received even fewer votes, 39, with many Republicans voting against it.

Meanwhile, the March 5 expiration became totally meaningless because the federal courts blocked Trump’s termination of DACA.

President Trump has repeated the following false claim at least 41 times.

“We need a wall. Whether you’re a Republican or Democrat, we need a wall. And it will stop your drug flow. It will knock the hell out of the drug flow.”

This is a longtime favorite claim of the president’s, but it hasn’t gotten any more accurate since the last time he said it.  

Most drugs do come into the United States across the southern border with Mexico. But a wall would not limit this illegal trade. The six main drug cartels use increasingly sophisticated methods to move product across the border.  Much of it travels through legal borders being disguised as innocuous liquids or alongside other cargo.  Or it comes through under-border tunnels unaffected by any possible physical "Wall" barrier.

But the president refuses to acknowledge this fact.  The Wall will not stop the drug cartels.

Even if the wall could curb illicit drug trafficking, it would have a minimal impact on the death toll from drug abuse. That's a prescription drug overdose issue that claims more lives than the illegal cocaine and heroin overdoses combined.

Another issue that the president refuses to admit.

These false claims have earned the President another Four Pinocchio’s for lying.

President Trump has also railed against illegal sanctuary cities since the 2016 campaign. But they are neither “illegal” nor “unconstitutional.” There’s no official definition of “sanctuary city,” but it generally refers to rules restricting state and local governments from alerting federal authorities about people who may be in the country illegally.

The following was another false Trump statement that President Trump has repeated at least 14 times.  :

“California’s sanctuary policies are illegal and unconstitutional and put the safety and security of our entire nation at risk. Thousands of dangerous & violent criminal aliens are released as a result of sanctuary policies, set free to prey on innocent Americans. THIS MUST STOP!”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can issue a request to be notified when a “criminal alien” is being released by state or local law enforcement so that they can take custody of the person in question while their immigration status is determined. But state and local law enforcement “are under no legal obligation to tell ICE when a non-criminal alien is released” and sometimes they choose not to alert federal authorities to maintain trust with the minority community.

Do sanctuary policies lead to “dangerous & violent criminal aliens” being released to “prey” on Americans?  Very little real research exists, but the limited research does seriously challenge Trump’s claim.

A handful of studies looked at whether there is causation between “sanctuary cities and crime”. They either found no statistically significant impact of sanctuary policies on crime, or a reduction in crime due to immigrant-friendly policing strategies.

Regardless, the idea that “thousands of dangerous & violent criminal aliens are released” is totally false.

Many sanctuary jurisdictions do alert federal authorities when they believe an inmate is a public safety threat.

This false claim has earned Trump Three Pinocchio’s.

Now, on April 3^rd, Trump stated: “We’ve started building the wall.”

It has been pointed out before that the Trump administration has definitely not started building The Wall.

Trump sought $25 billion from Congress to build a southern border wall, but the congress only gave him $1.6 billion. And that funding came with strings attached. It could not be spent on any of the concrete prototypes that Trump had toured and inspected. Instead, the money was designated for new, improved fencing and increased maintenance on existing fencing.  This effort falls well short of “building the wall” that the president continues to claim.

President Trump has repeated the above claim at least 13 times, but it has been awarded Three more Pinocchio’s.

On April 4, President Trump tweeted:  “Our Border Laws are very weak while those of Mexico & Canada are very strong. Congress must change these Obama era, and other, laws NOW! The Democrats stand in our way – they want people to pour into our country unchecked….CRIME! We will be taking strong action today.”

As for Mexico having “very strong border laws,” PolitiFact has reported that the White House pointed to a 2010 Washington Times article as evidence, but the Mexican law was changed in 2011 to decriminalize the act of entering their country without documentation.  It now allows undocumented immigrants to use Mexican education and health services.  Moreover, Mexico’s own southern border is much more porous than the US southern border.  This is despite a number of efforts that Mexico has taken to secure it.

President Trump has repeated the above false claim at least five times and this has earned him Three Pinocchio’s.

On April 1, President Trump said: “These big flows of people [from Mexico] are all trying to take advantage of DACA. They want in on the act!”

This is a totally ridiculous statement.

If immigrants are crossing the border for joining DACA, they will be gravely disappointed. The program has a slew of requirements, but in this case, the most important one is: “DACA is only available to illegal immigrants who have continuously resided in the United States since 2007”.  Our dense president didn’t even take the time to understand that fact.  This obviously means that  anyone who recently crossed the border into the United States would not be eligible for the program.

But President Trump has repeated this absurd claim at least twice since April 1^st and it was therefore awarded another Three Pinocchio’s.

Copyright G.Ater  2018