On a recent Thursday, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump delivered speeches in separate Texas locations near the Mexican border. Biden’s speech, largely scripted, was factually accurate, focusing on the bipartisan border bill he supports, which was thwarted in Congress due to Trump’s opposition.
Conversely, Trump’s speech, seemingly impromptu, was riddled with unfounded, misleading, or outright false claims about migrants. Some of his assertions were too vague and conspiratorial to fact-check accurately. For instance, he referred to migrants as “entire columns of fighting-age men,” insinuating without evidence a plot by foreign adversaries to assemble a covert enemy force in the US through migration.
Trump also suggested that unnamed individuals are allowing migrants into the country to secure votes, a faint echo of his previous false claim about migrants being enlisted to vote in the 2024 election. He failed to clarify that non-citizens cannot vote in federal, state, and almost all local elections.
He further claimed that the US is being “overrun” by a “new form” of crime he dubbed “Biden migrant crime.” This claim contradicts early data indicating that the US had one of its lowest violent crime rates in over 50 years in 2023, despite isolated incidents of undocumented individuals committing crimes.
Fact-checking Trump’s Claims
Two of Trump’s claims warrant further examination:
Foreign Countries and ‘Insane Asylums’
Trump reiterated his unfounded claim that migrants are being deliberately released by foreign leaders from prisons and mental health facilities. However, there is no evidence supporting his assertion that jails worldwide are being emptied to send prisoners to the US as migrants, or that foreign leaders are emptying mental health facilities for the same purpose.
Inaccurate Border Wall Statistics
Trump falsely claimed that “we built 571 miles of border wall” during his presidency. An official report by US Customs and Border Protection, written two days after Trump left office, stated that the total number built under Trump was 458 miles, including both new barriers and replacements for outdated ones.
These contrasting speeches highlight the importance of fact-checking and the need for accurate information in political discourse.