Immigration



"Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens."



This number sounds much worse than it really is. In fiscal 2015, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported nearly 140,000 convicted criminals, but ICE has estimated that nearly 1 million noncitizens with final deportation orders remain in the United States.



Of those, 182,786 have been convicted of crimes, and about 6,000 have been detained.



The actual crimes committed by this group are not documented, however, so Trump cannot easily claim that all of these illegal immigrants "threaten peaceful citizens." A significant percentage of their crimes involve immigration violations and nonviolent offenses, according to historical records.



"The number of new illegal immigrant families who have crossed the border so far this year already exceeds the entire total from 2015. They are being released by the tens of thousands into our communities with no regard for the impact on public safety or resources."



This is another cherry-picked number. From October to June, just over 50,000 families were apprehended at the southwestern border, up from about 40,000 in all of the previous fiscal year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. But overall apprehensions, including of unaccompanied minors, are running only slightly higher than in 2015 and remain far less than in 2014, 2013 and 2012.



Many of the Central American families arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border are being allowed into the country pending review of their cases in immigration court. If they are being released, it is typically because they have requested asylum because they are fleeing extreme violence, instability and endemic poverty in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.



"Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially for African -American and Latino workers."



This claim is quite convoluted.



First, Trump makes no distinction between legal and illegal immigration. The flow of legal immigrants has increased over the past four decades, stabilizing at roughly 1 million people obtaining lawful permanent resident status every year since 2001.



The unauthorized immigrant population increased from about 4 million in 1990 to about 12 million in 2007. But researchers estimate that the number of illegal immigrants has been essentially stable since then because of the large number of unauthorized immigrants who left the country during and after the Great Recession.



In general, economists have found that immigration benefits the U.S. economy and most workers. The slight negative effects are felt most strongly by less-educated and low-skilled workers.