,
10 tweets,
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With border crossings declining for years, and no true crisis to point to, the President has spun a manufactured crisis to justify his ineffective and costly border wall. Let’s fact check some of his outlandish claims --
#FALSE: Pres. Trump’s repeated claim that we have a crisis-level surge of illegal immigration at our southern border.
#FACT: At the end of 2017, arrests of people attempting to illegally enter the U.S. dropped to the lowest level since 1971. Between 2000 & 2018, border apprehensions fell sharply from roughly 1.6 m. in FY 2000 to approximately 400,000 in FY 2018 – that's a 75% drop.
#FALSE: Pres. Trump’s claim that we recently “captured 10 terrorists” at the southern border over a “very short period of time.”
#FACT: Approx. 10 ppl w suspected terrorist ties are prevented from traveling to the U.S. every day “by air, sea, or land.” That does NOT mean they’re entering the southern border. & a wall along our southern border does not stop a potential terrorist from flying into an airport.
#FALSE: Pres. Trump’s repeated claim that wall construction is under budget, and that additional funding for the wall is an urgent need.
#FACT: Border fencing construction is not “under budget.” The largest stretch of fencing that Congress has funded, a 25 mile barrier in the Rio Grande Valley, has ballooned in cost, from $445 to $787 million – a price tag of $31.5 million per mile for taxpayers.
#FACT: The Trump Administration has only spent 6 percent – SIX PERCENT – of the $1.7 billion the Congress has appropriated over the last two years to build or replace fencing on the southern border. That does not sound like an urgent need for additional billions in funding.
If there was an “urgent need” to construct a wall, Pres. Trump wouldn’t have to rely on so many blatant falsehoods. His obsession with a wall is nothing more than a desperate attempt to please his base and protect his ego. Read my full statement HERE: appropriations.senate.gov/news/minority/…
