Sessions: Erroneous tax credits to ‘mostly Mexicans’ could pay for wall

The proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border could be paid for by reducing erroneously issued tax credits that go to “mostly Mexicans,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Sunday.

Speaking on ABC’s "This Week," Sessions weighed in on the fight over funding for the wall, which is becoming part of the high-stakes negotiations between the White House and Congress over keeping the government funded after Friday.


“We're going to get paid for it one way or the other,” Sessions said of the wall. “I know there's $4 billion a year in excess payments, according to the Department of the Treasury's own inspector general several years ago, that are going to payments to people — tax credits that they shouldn't get. Now, these are mostly Mexicans. And those kind of things add up — $4 billion a year for 10 years is $40 billion.

"There are a lot of ways we can find money to help pay for this.”

Presumably the report that Sessions was citing was a July 2011 report by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration that said individuals who are not authorized to work in the U.S. have been paid $4.2 billion in refundable tax credits. But it did not mention Mexicans or any other nationalities.

As a presidential candidate in 2015, Donald Trump cited the $4.2 billion figure to criticize U.S. immigration policy.

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Democrats on Sunday criticized the Trump administration for focusing on the wall. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on NBC’s "Meet the Press": “The wall is, in my view, immoral, expensive, unwise.”

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a former Democratic leader in Congress, said on "This Week": “I'm still trying to figure out who believes that a medieval situation to fix our broken immigrant situation is what we need.”

