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Fact-checking Over 12,000 Of Donald Trump’s Statements About Immigration

‘I could get elected twice over the wall,’ said former President Trump. It could end up being one of the few true things he’s said about immigration.

The Marshall Project

Oct 23, 2024

Courtesy of The Marshall Project

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Donald Trump knows how important his words about unauthorized immigrants are.

“Migrant criminals.” “Illegal monster.” “Killers.” “Gang members.” “Poisoning our country.” “Taking your jobs.” “The largest invasion in the history of our country.”

Repetition has been core to Trump’s speech throughout his political career. The Marshall Project used text analysis to identify 13 major claims about immigration in over 350,000 of Trump’s public statements from Factba.se, each of which Trump has made at least 30 times to 550 times or more. All of them are untrue or deeply misleading.

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Research has shown that as someone hears a statement more times, it feels more true.

Millions of Americans and people worldwide have heard these claims. Here they are, fact-checked by the staff of The Marshall Project.

Trump claims that:

Also Read: How to Spot Misinformation

“Under Border Czar Harris, our communities are being ravaged by migrant crime.” — Trump

Claimed by Trump more than 575 times

Fact check

According to a consistent, overwhelming amount of criminology research, immigrants to the United States, both legal and undocumented, have committed less crime than native-born Americans going all the way back to the 1870s.

Fact check by Aaron Sankin

For Donald Trump, immigrants bring crime. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said during his 2015 campaign announcement. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”

But immigration in the U.S. is strongly associated with lower crime. Looking at data from 200 metropolitan areas, a 2017 study found immigrants are “less likely to offend than native born Americans” and “for property crimes, immigration has a consistently negative effect” on a region’s crime rate. That trend, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) research found, has been consistent all the way back to 1870.

Those findings hold true for undocumented immigrants. Using estimates of undocumented populations, researchers in 2018 found that “undocumented immigration does not increase violence.” Similarly, a study published one year earlier asserted undocumented immigrants have lower rates of drug arrests, overdoses and drunk driving offenses than native-born Americans.

Why do immigrants commit fewer crimes? One theory is that the type of person willing to pack up their entire life to seek prosperity in America is also the type of person unwilling to put all of that at risk through criminal behavior, according to a 2007 NBER paper.

While first-generation immigrants generally display lower levels of criminality, their descendants tend to behave more and more like the greater U.S. population as their families assimilate. “By the second generation, immigrants have simply caught up to their native-born counterparts,” reads a 2014 study.

Trump’s oft-repeated assertion that immigrants make crime worse is shared by around half of Americans, according to a 2023 survey — a number relatively consistent with when Pew started asking the question nearly a quarter-century ago. Only 5% of respondents thought immigrants reduce crime.

“[South American countries are] emptying out their prisons and their mental institutions into the United States of America.” — Trump

Claimed by Trump more than 560 times

Fact check

Experts and journalists find no evidence that South American countries are intentionally freeing mentally ill and incarcerated people to infiltrate the U.S.

Fact check by Doug Livingston

Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that millions of immigrants crossing the southern U.S. border were intentionally released from overseas jails, prisons and asylums, especially in countries like Venezuela.

These claims have been routinely debunked by journalists, researchers and fact-checkers. Pressed multiple times, Trump’s campaign has not been able to corroborate the claims, making it difficult to fact-check something that may not exist.

A kernel of truth driving Trump’s claim is that federal officials say they’ve encountered Venezuelan gang members crossing the southern border, though in nowhere near the numbers the former president is pushing. And there’s no evidence they were incarcerated or systematically released, intentionally or otherwise, to infiltrate the U.S.

Criminology and immigration experts, both inside and outside of Venezuela, told El País, the largest daily Spanish-language newspaper in the world, that there’s been no emptying of prisons and mental institutions. Meanwhile, Trump has exaggerated and misattributed the country’s decline in violent crime. A 2023 annual report on violence from an alliance of Venezuelan universities links a more modest 25% decline in violence to peace agreements between organized gangs and fewer opportunities for crime amid a suffering economy. The report does say outward migration of youth gangs temporarily drove up violence in neighboring countries.

Republicans echo Trump’s accusations. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott proclaimed the border a disaster less than five months into the Biden administration. Last month, Abbott amended that proclamation to label Tren de Aragua — the Venezuelan gang at the heart of Trump’s unfounded claim — a terrorist organization.

“Cases like Kate Steinle, murdered in San Francisco by a five-time deported illegal immigrant, or cases like Sarah Root… or my friend Jamiel Shaw who lost his incredible son…” — Trump

Claimed by Trump more than 235 times

Fact check

Trump relies on emotionally powerful anecdotes to portray an alleged crime wave by undocumented immigrants, but research shows that immigrants commit less crime than native-born Americans.

Fact check by Joseph Neff

Donald Trump has claimed that Mexico is flooding the border with drug dealers, criminals and rapists by repeating emotionally powerful anecdotes. Two weeks after his 2015 presidential campaign announcement, Trump latched onto a poster child: Jose Garcia-Zarate, a five-times deported Mexican national who was charged with murder for fatally shooting 32-year-old Kate Steinle on a pier in San Francisco. She died in her father’s arms.

Trump repeatedly invoked Steinle’s killing as part of an immigrant crime wave and said that he is “the only one who can fix it.”

Trump’s focus on Garcia-Zarate is part of a pattern of highlighting undocumented people of color killing or raping White women: Lakin RileyJocelyn NungarayRachel Morin and Marilyn Pharis.

While each of these violent crimes is tragic, multiple studies have shown there is no crime wave: Documented and undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. Individual cases of violence can always be found within a population of some 11 million undocumented immigrants, said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a professor at the Moritz School of Law.

These individual stories “serve as useful rallying points around which his supporters and members of the right-wing media ecosystem are willing to devote immense amounts of time,” García Hernández said.

And some of Trump’s cases aren’t what he claims they are. A jury acquitted Garcia-Zarate of murder, finding the gun went off by accident and ricocheted off the pier before killing Steinle. Trump called it “a disgraceful verdict” and tweeted, “BUILD THE WALL!

Steinle’s family did not appreciate the attention. “For Donald Trump, we were just what he needed — beautiful girl, San Francisco, illegal immigrant, arrested a million times, a violent crime and yadda, yadda, yadda,” Liz Sullivan, Steinle’s mother, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “We were the perfect storm for that man.”

“They want [unauthorized immigrants] voting, because they believe they’ll be voting for Democrats every single time.” — Trump

Claimed by Trump more than 20 times

Fact check

There is no evidence that Democratic immigration policies have led to any meaningful increase in noncitizen voting, or in any form of demographic advantage for the party.

Fact check by Jamiles Lartey

Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections and the available evidence shows attempts to get around the law are vanishingly rare.

State-level reviews of voter rolls have routinely found negligible numbers of noncitizens attempting or successfully registering to vote. For example, earlier this year in Ohio, about 600 noncitizens were found to have registered to vote. Of those, about 138 are believed to have cast a ballot, representing about 0.002% of the state’s registered voters. Similarly, in August, a yearslong review in Texas found about 2,000 “potential” noncitizens with voting histories on Texas voter rolls — or 0.01% of the electorate — but to date, none have been accused of voting illegally.

Republicans have still tried to tighten voter registration laws, specifically the 2024 SAVE Act legislation, which would force states to verify citizenship before adding someone to the voter rolls, an effort that Democrats have stymied to this point.

Another version of Trump’s argument is that pro-immigrant efforts by Democrats pad the census counts of Democrat-majority districts and give the party an advantage in House representation and the Electoral College. Trump ally Elon Musk has repeatedly echoed this claim, falsely claiming that Democrats have gained as many as 20 seats in the House due to illegal immigration.

Multiple analyses have found that illegal immigration is responsible for between 0 and 1 additional Democratic representatives in the House based on the 2020 census. Additionally, at the statewide level, noncitizen arrivals have been concentrated in Republican-leaning states since 2019, according to an analysis by the Cato Institute.

“[Democrats] want sanctuary cities, which means crime and drugs and death.” — Trump

Claimed by Trump more than 185 times

Fact check

Research consistently shows no link between sanctuary policies and increased crime rates. Instead, migrants in sanctuary cities are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens, with cities tending to experience decreases in property crime and homicide rates.

Fact check by Andrew Rodriguez Calderón

Although there is no single definition for a “sanctuary city,” Donald Trump is broadly referring to states or municipalities that choose not to cooperate with federal immigration authorities to arrest or detain people suspected of violating the country’s immigration laws. It’s a movement that traces its origins back to the 1980s, when churches banded together to shelter refugees fleeing violence in El Salvador and Guatemala. These religious communities offered migrants protection in open defiance of the federal government.

Trump’s claims that these policies lead to increased crime by undocumented immigrants are central to the larger debate over whether the sanctuary movement threatens the safety of the local communities embracing it.

Research shows that there is no link between sanctuary policies and rising crime rates. There are numerous studies that reach the same conclusion using various types of statistical research methods. Instead, researchers find that migrants are less likely to commit crimes than their native-born counterparts.

A 2017 study found that, across 107 U.S. cities, homicide and robbery rates tended to drop as the number of undocumented immigrants from Mexico increased, but only in sanctuary cities. One theory explaining why is that sanctuary policies allow undocumented immigrants to interact with law enforcement without fear of deportation, producing “a spiral of trust that supports police and raises informal social control over crime.”

“Do you want to hear ‘The Snake?’…This was an old song that I revised… Think of it as the people that we’re letting in.” — Trump

Claimed by Trump more than 35 times

Fact check

The daughters of Oscar Brown Jr., the original writer of the snake song, said Trump’s interpretation is dishonest and immigrants are not dangerous like the snake.

Fact check by Shannon Heffernan

At rally after rally, Donald Trump asks the crowd if they want to hear the poem “The Snake” and the audience roars. A Marshall Project analysis estimates he has read or referenced the poem at least three dozen times.

The poem is actually the lyrics of a song based on one of Aesop’s fables, in which a tender-hearted woman picks up a frozen snake and warms it. When it’s revived, the snake repays her kindness with a poisonous bite. She asks him why he would kill her and the snake replies, “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.” In a speech in South Carolina, Trump told the crowd the lyrics were pertinent in light of “people coming into our country who are going to cause tremendous problems.”

Misinformation can come in the form of outright lies, but also in the less tangible, and more difficult to fact-check, medium of a metaphor. A 2018 academic paper analyzed Trump’s use of metaphor and found he frequently evoked the image of immigrants as animals. “He uses this metaphor to present himself as a hero, as someone who will protect you from these animals,” a study author told Frontline.

Ironically, the song was written by civil rights activist and musician Oscar Brown Jr. Brown, who wrote essays against racism, ran as a progressive candidate in Illinois and for a brief time joined the Communist Party.

In an interview, Brown’s daughter Africa Brown said her father was “never against immigrants” and said, “Trump is the living embodiment of the snake that my father wrote about in that song.”

“We have no idea who they are. They want to come into our country. They may be ISIS. It may be the great Trojan Horse of all time. Who knows?” — Trump

Claimed by Trump more than 650 times

Fact check

Arab and Muslim refugees from the Middle East are unlikely to enter the U.S. due to rigorous vetting. In the rare cases they were accepted, they have been connected to planning or carrying out acts of terrorism in only a handful of instances since 1980.

Fact check by Ghazala Irshad

Donald Trump’s assertions that members of Hamas, ISIS and other extremist groups are entering the country as refugees to conduct acts of terrorism largely don’t hold up to reality. Historically, most perpetrators of terror attacks have been U.S.-born citizens or permanent legal residents from countries not part of the Trump administration’s “Muslim ban,” which restricted travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

A 2023 Cato Institute analysis found that the annual odds of an American being murdered in a terrorist attack by a refugee is one in 3.3 billion. The likelihood of being killed in a terrorist attack by any foreigner is one in 4.3 million, and the chance of being killed in a terrorist attack committed by an undocumented immigrant is “zero.”

According to a 2015 Migration Policy Institute article examining nearly 800,000 resettled refugees since Sept. 11, 2001, only three — two Iraqi and one Uzbek — have been arrested for planning terror attacks: Two were to take place abroad, and one was “barely credible.” However, the following year, a Somali refugee in Ohio stabbed 13 people (none of whom died).

After Israel’s invasion and bombardment of Gaza in response to Hamas’ attack that killed almost 1,200 Israelis and took over 250 hostages last year, Trump claimed, without evidence, that the “same people” behind the attack in Israel were entering the U.S. through “our totally open southern border.” Palestinians in Gaza largely cannot escape the war outside the strip’s borders because of Israel’s land, sea and air blockade. The main U.N. agency settling Palestinian refugees does not refer them to the U.S. The number of Palestinian refugees going through other countries, and referred to the U.S. by nongovernmental organizations, is quite small and subject to rigorous vetting to identify anyone posing “security risks.” According to the State Department, fewer than 600 Palestinians have come to the U.S. as refugees in the last decade. In the 2023 fiscal year, out of more than 60,000 total refugees accepted by the U.S., only 56 were Palestinian.

“Illegal aliens coming into our country under Biden are treated better than our vets.” — Trump

Claimed by Trump more than 270 times

Fact check

While it’s true many undocumented people make use of public benefits, their monetary contribution to the country likely exceeds the cost of the benefits they consume, and they do not receive more benefits than citizens who are veterans.