Fact check: what the US president got wrong in his primetime address on the border wall

In a primetime address from the Oval Office on Tuesday night, Donald Trump made his case for the US to expand its wall on the southern border.

The US president blamed criminal gangs and “vast quantities of illegal drugs” for “thousands of deaths”, described the situation at the border with Mexico as a humanitarian crisis and argued that the current immigration system allows “vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs” to prey on immigrants, especially women and children.

Trump’s arguments often rely on inaccurate or dated statistics and lack important context about the situation at the border, which, as always, is complicated.

Here are six things you should know about the president’s address.

1. A wall won’t stop drug traffickers

US shuts Mexican drug smugglers' cross-border 'super tunnel' Read more

In his address, Trump cited accurate numbers about drug overdoses in the US, but omitted important context when making the argument that building a wall would remedy these issues.

“Our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, including meth, heroin, cocaine and fentanyl,” Trump said. “Every week, 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90% of which floods across from our southern border.”

The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has said the most common way for traffickers to smuggle drugs across the border is actually by hiding them in cars that drive through official border checkpoints.

And a wall would not resolve the demand for drugs. It might just make it more expensive for drug dealers to get drugs to customers in the US.

2. Illegal immigration to the US has plummeted

In 2000, the government apprehended 1.6 million people crossing the border illegally. Last year, it apprehended 310,531, the lowest figure since 1971. This number reflects a drop in illegal immigration that has held steady since the economic recession in 2008.

3. People in the US illegally often enter legally

While 310,531 people were apprehended trying to cross the southern border illegally in 2017, in the same year more than 600,000 people who entered the US legally by air or sea overstayed their visas and remained in the country at the end of the year, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

This is a tiny fraction of the 52 million people who entered the US legally in 2017. It is estimated that the number of visa overstays are actually higher, because the DHS report does not include land crossings.

4. Unaccompanied children and families seeking asylum are approaching the border at overwhelming rates

In November, more than 25,000 families crossed the border, the highest monthly total on record. They are mostly from Central America and are fleeing violence and poverty.

Trump incorrectly explained this surge on Tuesday night.

“Last month, 20,000 migrant children were illegally brought into the United States, a dramatic increase,” he said. “These children are used as human pawns by vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs.”

There is no way to track how many children are smuggled in maliciously and the numbers he cited to support this claim were actually about family apprehensions at the border, which means he is implying parents were smugglers or gang members.

The Trump administration shut down Obama-era programs that tried to address this problem and has implemented a metering policy at major ports of entry that limits how many people can seek asylum each day.

Shelters on both sides of the border are overwhelmed by asylum seekers and US Customs and Border Protection officers have been asking for more resources to house and process people.

People have a legal right to seek asylum but processing their claims is tough: the immigration court backlog has hit more than a million cases, according to Syracuse University’s transactional records access clearinghouse.

Trump consistently depicts the border crisis as an issue of national security, not a humanitarian matter. But on Sunday, in talks with Democrats aimed at ending the government shutdown, the White House added to its border wall funding proposal an offer of $800m to help fund care for families seeking asylum.

5. Terrorists rarely enter the US through Mexico

While Trump frequently mentions terrorism when discussing immigration, it is notable that he did not discuss it in his address.

At the weekend, Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, claimed that 4,000 known or suspected terrorists had been apprehended at the southern border, something her colleague Kellyanne Conway admitted was “an unfortunate misstatement”.

In September, a state department report concerning 2017 found “no credible evidence indicating that international terrorist groups have established bases in Mexico, worked with Mexican drug cartels, or sent operatives via Mexico into the United States. The US southern border remains vulnerable to potential terrorist transit, although terrorist groups likely seek other means of trying to enter the United States.”

A report released by the justice department in January 2018 linked immigrants to terrorism. But security analysts immediately said the report was misleading and this month the department acknowledged the report was rife with errors and deficiencies. It has, however, refused to retract or correct it.

6. US citizens can also be dangerous criminals

The DHS said from October 2017 to August 2018, Customs and Border Protection encountered 16,831 “criminal aliens”. Of that group, 63% were stopped at at legal ports of entry, thanks to extensive security screenings.

That left 6,259 people who were apprehended and who had criminal convictions. Among that group, 47% were convicted for illegally entering or re-entering the US and 13% had records or convictions for sexual, violent or firearms offenses.

As PRI’s The World points out, a total of 362,000 people were apprehended by border patrol in the same period, which means one in 450 of them had such convictions. Among adult Americans, that ratio is one in 12 with felony convictions.