As Donald Trump made his triumphant entrance on the second night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, the program shifted to one of his signature issues: illegal immigration.
After an ominous video showing chaos at the U.S.-Mexico border was aired, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas spoke, declaring, “We are facing an invasion on our southern border.”
Here are some of the claims made on Tuesday:
Video narrator: “Biden has ordered illegal immigrants to come here and storm the border, one of the worst mistakes of any president in history.”
FACT: After this claim, the video cuts to President Biden saying, “In fact, we will be sending more troops to the border immediately,” and a narrator says, “And they will.”
But important context is missing: The clip is from the Sept. 12, 2019 Democratic presidential debate. Discussing immigration, Univision host Jorge Ramos noted that Biden served as vice president under President Obama and deported 3 million people. Biden then asked, “Are you prepared to say tonight that you and President Obama made a mistake?”
Biden responded by noting President Obama’s immigration achievements and discussing then-President Trump’s policies, adding, “There are a few other things I’m going to do if I’m president, because things have changed. I’m going to actually make sure we have an immediate surge on the border. We should listen to all the people who are seeking asylum. That’s who we are.”
Since then, Biden has repeatedly said he would deploy agents and other law enforcement resources to the border to deal with the influx of migrants.
Video narrator: “Biden’s incompetence has now led to the horrific deaths of as many as 300,000 Americans, not from nuclear bombs but from deadly fentanyl delivered through Biden’s open borders.”
Fact: While it’s true that much of the fentanyl in the U.S. is smuggled in from Mexico, 86.4% of fentanyl trafficking crimes committed in the 12 months ending in September 2023 were committed by U.S. citizens, according to the U.S. Commission on Criminal Justice.
The fentanyl epidemic began long before Biden took office, and while border seizures are only part of the picture, they have surged under Biden’s administration, which may in part reflect improved enforcement.
U.S. authorities are expected to seize about 27,000 pounds of fentanyl in fiscal year 2023, up from the 2,545 pounds in 2019, when President Trump was in office.
Cruz: “Every day Americans die. They’re murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants released by Democrats.”
Fact: Numerous violent, high-profile crimes involving people in the U.S. illegally have been in the news in recent months, but there is nothing to back up the claim that they happen every day.
According to the Census Bureau, the foreign-born population in the country, both legal and illegal, is estimated to be 46.2 million by 2022, about 14% of the total, of which about 11 million are illegal.
Barely a month goes by without at least one person in the country being wrongfully charged with a horrific, high-profile crime, such as the murder of a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia in February or the strangulation of a 12-year-old girl in Houston in June.
Texas is the only state that tracks crime by immigration status, and a study published by the National Academy of Sciences based on Texas Department of Public Safety data from 2012 to 2016 found that people in the US illegally “have significantly lower crime rates across a range of felony offenses than U.S.-born citizens and legal immigrants.”
While the FBI statistics don’t break down crimes by the immigration status of the perpetrators, there’s no evidence of a surge in immigrant crime along the US-Mexico border or in cities with the highest immigrant influxes, such as New York. Studies have found that people in the US illegally are less likely to be arrested for violent, drug, or property crimes than native-born Americans.
Spagat and Goldin contributed to The Associated Press.