Washington (CNN) Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday misleadingly cited some statistics about illegal entry to the US in an effort to build support for the Trump administration's border wall by tying the issue of immigration to fears of terrorism and crime.

In an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America," Pence was asked about a statistic, misleadingly cited by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, that 4,000 "known or suspected terrorists" were caught trying to enter the US illegally as part of the administration's push for greater security at the southern border. Although the Department of Homeland Security has said 3,755 individuals the Department of Homeland Security has cited as "known or suspected terrorists" were prevented from traveling to or entering the US in fiscal year 2017, the vast majority of those people attempted to enter by air or legal ports of entry elsewhere.

The data concerns individuals attempting to travel to the US by air, sea or land, and includes those who made efforts to obtain visas from embassies and consulates around the world. In July 2017, the State Department said there was "no credible information that any member of a terrorist group has traveled through Mexico to gain access to the United States."

The administration's suggestion that tighter southern border security is needed to stop thousands of terrorists stands in contrast to the government's own statistics on the issue. According to a senior administration official familiar with Customs and Border Protection data, roughly a dozen individuals who are not US citizens and are on the terror watchlist were encountered on the southern border between October 2017 and October 2018.

"The White House said 4,000 terrorists coming to our country. That's not true," ABC's Jon Karl asked Pence, pressing the vice president on how Americans could trust the administration on this issue given the myriad misstatements they've made.

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