kd7eir Loc: Tucson, AZ

Trump's televised lying circle jerk:

►Illegal border crossings are down. Significantly.

In 2000, 1.6 million people were apprehended trying to cross the southern border into the United States. In 2001, 1.3 million were apprehended. In 2018? Less than 400,000. That’s not just a decline. It’s a significant decline.

A lot of the decline was because of the recession, which dried up jobs migrants were seeking to fill. But if we’re being fair, apprehension numbers reached a low of about 310,000 in 2017 in part because of increased border enforcement and fear of Trump and his anti-immigrant policies.

►The counties along the southern border are among the safest in the United States.

According to data from the Wilson Center, as summarized by The Washington Post, “The crime rates in U.S. border counties are lower than the average for similarly sized inland counties, with two exceptions out of 23 total.”

Anti-immigrant conservatives like to talk about how undocumented immigrants are supposedly menacing border communities and making border states less safe. Recently, in a segment with me on CNN, conservative radio host and Trump supporter Ben Ferguson shouted, “Talk to people in Texas! I’m in Texas right now! People here … have been k**led by i*****l i*******ts that come across the border illegally. And you say it’s fearmongering!?”

Yes, I do. And I’m not the only one. Christopher Wilson, deputy director of the Wilson Center, told The Post, “There is no doubt the U.S. side (of the border) is a very safe place.”

►Most undocumented immigrants don’t “sneak” across the border.

The majority of immigrants in the USA without authorization first entered the country legally, and then overstayed their visas. The Center for Migration Studies said in a 2017 report that crossing the border is not the way “the large majority of persons now becoming undocumented.” It reported that two-thirds of undocumented immigrants entered the U.S. legally and then simply overstayed their visas. If you legitimately are concerned about the issue of undocumented immigrants, as opposed to just exacerbating and exploiting fearmongering for political gain, then this is where you would focus — not the border.

►The White House is lying about terrorists crossing the southern border.

In an interview on Fox News this weekend, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted that “nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists come into our country illegally, and we know that our most vulnerable point of entry is at our southern border.” Sanders' careful wording suggests she knew she was more than bending the t***h. Fox News anchor Chris Wallace fact-checked Sanders: “Do you know where those 4,000 people come, where they are captured? Airports.”

“The state department says there hasn’t been any terrorists found coming across the southern border,” Wallace stated. But Sanders kept pressing the lie, because Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda relies on fact-less fearmongering.

►Migrant caravans aren’t “sneaking” across the border, either.

If you care about facts, it’s important to distinguish between illegal border crossings and migrants lawfully presenting themselves at southern ports of entry in order to apply for asylum. The simple fact is that large groups of very visible migrants, such as the main so-called migrant caravan of people fleeing violence in Central America, are obviously not trying to “sneak” across the U.S. border. They’re coming to the border to apply for asylum, which was a completely t***sparent and lawful process until Trump started changing the rules.

►Drugs entering the USA across the southern border are most often hidden in legal shipments.

Trump has suggested that the flow of heroin into the United States would be stanched by his border wall. He’s right that 90 percent of heroin enters through the southern border. However, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency, “illicit drugs are smuggled into the United States in concealed compartments within passenger vehicles or commingled with legitimate goods on tractor trailers.”

In other words, a wall wouldn’t stop most heroin from entering the country. And arguably, resources spent on the wall would divert from other enforcement mechanisms, such as more officers and technology at ports of entry to scan vehicles for drugs.

It’s also noteworthy that in ramping up prosecution of migrants trying to enter the United States, the Trump administration actually reduced prosecution of drug traffickers. Last June saw the fewest such prosecutions in two decades.

►Conservative political figures and think tanks think Trump’s wall is pointless.

What apparently began as a memory device to help the undisciplined Trump remember what to thunder about during campaign appearances has turned into a central bone the president won’t let go of. But there’s a reason Trump couldn’t get funding for his wall during the past two years of his presidency when his own party completely controlled both houses of Congress: They didn’t want it. The New York Times reports that leading anti-immigration activists are concerned Trump’s focus on the “relatively ineffectual” wall is distracting from other strategies they would like prioritized.

For instance, Republican Rep. Will Hurd, from the border state of Texas, said in 2017, “I’ve made it clear time and time again that building a physical wall from sea to shining sea is the most expensive and least effective way to secure the border.” The conservative Cato Institute has called Trump’s wall idea “impractical, expensive and ineffective.” One might suspect that more Republicans would speak out against Trump’s stupid wall idea if they weren’t afraid of alienating the right-wing GOP base.

►There are already 654 miles of border fencing.

The U.S.-Mexico border is 1,933 miles long. Of that, 34 percent already has a wall or a fence — in particular, parts along the areas of the border that are most easily accessed by people traveling by car or on foot. That’s right, there’s already a wall along 654 miles of the U.S. border. What’s the rest? Huge mountains and rivers and vast stretches of land that are privately owned, which the United States would have to seize through eminent domain if Trump got his way. Mind you, those areas aren’t completely open — they’re actively patrolled using sensors and drones and other technology, the sorts of things experts say actually work.

Here it’s worth noting that the less than 400,000 people who were trying to cross the border in 2018 were arrested. They were caught and detained and deported. Because of our already extremely highly militarized and aggressive border patrol efforts.

Screamin Scott Loc: Marshfield Wi, Baltimore Md, now Dallas Ga

Says nothing about the ones that were not caught...If walls were so useless, why do we have any?

Frank T Loc: New York, NY

Scott, That posts makes no sense. Why don't you give us a number or better yet, the names of the terrorists that weren't caught?

EyeSawYou

Border apprehensions of migrant families have risen substantially so far in 2018

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/06/border-apprehensions-of-migrant-families-have-risen-substantially-so-far-in-2018/

jcboy3

Republicans could have gotten a wall; it was part of the proposed immigration deal that Trump waffled on. Before someone told him that he would piss off his base if he negotiated an immigration deal.

Then he had a deal for a CR to fund government while actual spending bills were negotiated. And then Trump waffled on that after a couple of right wing nut job TV personalities told him he would piss off his base if he negotiated government funding.

Trump is not a negotiator, he is a waffling flip-flopper. What he is good at is going bankrupt, and that seems to be what he is doing to this country.

EyeSawYou

I don't think you know what a flip flop is.

jcboy3

I don't care what you think.

boberic Loc: Quiet Corner, Connecticut. Ex long Islander

Lets AssumE your number of i******s trying or secceding to cross the soiuthern border is correct. Down to 4 00,000 and 99% are wonderful people. That means that 4,000 criminals are attempting to cross or have already crosed. Is that a good thing? Walls won't prevent every illegal from entering the country. But ask yourself the following questions. Do you want a loved one to be injured-or worse, by one of those criminals? Do you lock y

jcboy3

Most criminals are US citizens, yet Republicans raise a big stink if an i*****l i*******t commits a crime. Stopping all immigration would make a minor dent in the crime rates.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/19/two-charts-demolish-the-notion-that-immigrants-here-illegally-commit-more-crime/?utm_term=.4873bcb1a69a

Texcaster Loc: Queensland

Limbaugh, Coulter and Fox - "Flip Trump!"

Babylon - "Front flip? Back flip? Flip out?


... and then McConnell, bless him, publicly put the boot in with ... " If he doesn't win this one he's finished for 2019."

EyeSawYou

That's because you know I am correct, you are ignorant.

boberic Loc: Quiet Corner, Connecticut. Ex long Islander

A useless metric. Of course more crime is committed by citizens, bedcause there are so many more citizens than i******s. A more important stat would be the percentage of crimes relative the the number of i******s compaired to citizens.

LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

Bravo Sierra.

jcboy3

To you.

BigWahoo Loc: Kentucky

"'Texas border communities cringe as Trump sounds alarm over wall'

Darling and a half-dozen other Texas border officials also signed a letter to Trump on Tuesday welcoming him to the Rio Grande Valley and inviting him to tour the bridges and busy ports of entry where more than $2 billion in goods cross the border every day.

Those same understaffed ports of entry, the officials pointed out, are also where 90 percent of drug seizures take place along the border.

“We, along with border residents share a concern for border security and stand with the brave U.S. Customs and Border Protection men and women who continue to protect our nation every day,” they wrote as members of the Texas Border Coalition. “Our officers and their facilities are stretched thin, face an overwhelming opponent in the international drug cartels, and deserve all the support you may be able to offer.”

Darling, like other border officials, sees a use for fences, walls, levees and other types of barriers for certain parts of the border. He just doesn’t see them as the whole answer. And in some places, particularly where they wall off land on the U.S. side of the river, he believes they’re counterproductive.

“The river is a relatively effective deterrent,” Darling said. “It’s not the best deterrent. But if you build a wall north of there, you’re ceding territory between the wall and the river to the cartels or whoever it is.”

While Trump wants a wall - it has become the main sticking point in a partial government shutdown that was in its 18th day on Tuesday - Darling and his Rio Grande Valley colleagues talk about a lack of inspection personnel, technology and infrastructure at ports of entry like the McAllen-Hidalgo International Bridge."

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/texas/article/Texas-border-communities-cringe-as-Trump-sounds-13518898.php