Three Big Lies From Donald Trump's Border Security Address, Explained

By Lily Herman


On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump gave his first Oval Office address titled the “Address the Country on the Humanitarian and National Security Crisis on our Southern Border.” What followed, but, was much of the racist and xenophobic rhetoric we’ve heard from Trump for the past three along with 1/2 years—including the false claims that undocumented immigrants as a whole are dangerous To America and that the only solution to questions over our border security is a $5 billion wall. Even worse, Trump’s address showcased that there’s likely no end in sight to the government shutdown that’s heading into its third week.


To recap, in late December Donald Trump mentioned he would refuse to sign any spending bill from Congress that didn’t include over $5 billion to put towards making a wall at the southern U.S. Border, effectively shutting down the U.S. Government for the time being. (It’s also of note that there really are already many areas with fortifications at the U.S.-Mexico border.)


The current shutdown, which affects over 800,000 government employees and millions of people who plan on key government departments, is currently the second-longest in American history.


The ripple effects are endless: Amidst all of the talk about protecting U.S. Borders, a huge variety of TSA agents are calling in sick due to working without pay, increasing safety risks in airports nationwide. More than 38 million Residents of the United States who rely on food stamps could visualize them reduced should the shutdown continue into next month. Tax refunds that several Residents of the United States rely on may be delayed. Native American communities are right now using their own funds to cover their healthcare and food pantry costs since government funding has stopped. College students can’t complete graduation requirements, employers can’t verify I-9 documentation, farmers don’t have access to the loans they require to begin purchasing supplies for the spring, and more. With Trump and the Democrats holding their ground, there’s no telling as soon as it’ll end.


What did Trump have to mention about the wall? Well, Americans heard quite several of the same lies that Trump has used for years:


“Over the years, thousands of Americans have been brutally killed by those who illegally entered our nation and thousands more lives will be lost if we don’t act right now.”


As he’s done since the starting of his presidential campaign, Trump cherry-picked uncited data and cases to illustrate his unproven belief that undocumented immigrants are synonymous with crime.


Yet, this notion that the U.S. Is only crime-ridden because of undocumented immigrants is false. Case in point, intelligence from the Cato Institute looking at Texas, one of the states most affected by immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, noticed that native-born Residents of the
U.S. Are convicted of more crimes than undocumented immigrants and documented immigrants. Case in point, undocumented immigrants had 50% fewer criminal convictions than native-born Residents of the
U.S.. Furthermore, recent academic scholarship highlights that states with more undocumented immigrants decisively have far less violent crime.


“Democrats in Congress have declined to acknowledge the crisis…”


Throughout the Democratic rebuttal delivered following Trump’s speech, Residence Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pointed out that much of the “crisis” at the southern border has been manufactured by Trump’s administration—and Democrats have largely been the ones scrambling to stop the disaster.


This includes their efforts to repair the administration’s abhorrent child separation policy, understand what led to nearly two dozen immigrants dying in ICE detention since Trump took office, come up with a solution to the administration’s ending of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and more.


“The federal government remains shut off for one reason, and one reason only, because Democrats will not fund border security.”


Pelosi and Schumer also emphasized an obvious fact: On the opening starting day that the 116th Congress was in session, Residence Democrats, who right now hold most of them, passed government spending legislation that was nearly identical to what Senate Republicans passed at the tail-end of the 115th Congress. Due to Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to put the bill up to a vote throughout the new 116th Congress, the bill hasn’t passed the Senate for a second time, dragging the shutdown to its current standstill.


That mentioned, both parties are in agreement on one thing: The government shutdown should end while discussions and debate over what to do about border security continue. Donald Trump is the only person who doesn’t agree with that notion.


Furthermore, most of them of Residents of the
U.S. Themselves aren’t purchasing Trump’s claim that the Democrats shoulder the blame for the current shutdown. An aggregation of recent polling on the allocate noticed that 50% of Americans directly blame Trump for the shutdown, compared to just 35% who directly blame the Democrats.


The bottom line? There wasn’t any new intelligence in Trump’s first Oval Office address; it was the same old racism and the same old xenophobia. And unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of livelihoods and millions of Residents of the United States will be affected for the time being. In a nation where 80 percent of folks are living paycheck to paycheck, day-to-day could spell catastrophe.


Follow Lily Herman on Twitter. The views expressed are her own.