In a wide-ranging interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” President Donald Trump repeated several false and misleading claims, while putting a new twist on some of them.
FactChecking Trump’s ‘60 Minutes’ Interview
Issues: Illegal immigration
Trump’s Numbers October 2018 Update
Statistical measures of how things have changed since the president took office.
Misleading Ad Targets O’Rourke for Border Comments
A misleading TV ad from Sen. Ted Cruz claims Rep. Beto O’Rourke “said crossing the border illegally should not be a crime.” O’Rourke wasn’t referring to all illegal border crossings. He said asylum-seekers who enter the country between official entry ports should not be prosecuted.
Unaccompanied Minors in Deportation Proceedings
Q: Is it true that a 1-year-old child has never appeared as a defendant in immigration court — until this year?
A: No. Unaccompanied children in the U.S. illegally, including those as young as 1, have previously appeared in court. Some children do not have attorneys.
Illegal Immigration Statistics
Much of the political rhetoric in recent weeks has focused on illegal immigration. We thought it would be helpful to take a step back and look at some measures of illegal immigration in a larger context.
Is Illegal Immigration Linked to More or Less Crime?
President Donald Trump said it’s “not true” that immigrants in the U.S. illegally are “safer than the people that live in the country,” providing several crime statistics he claimed represented the “toll of illegal immigration.” Sen. Bernie Sanders made the opposite claim, saying: “I understand that the crime rate among undocumented people is actually lower than the general population.”
Video: Nielsen’s Policy Distortion
This video from CNN’s Jake Tapper and FactCheck.org explains how Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen distorted the facts when she tweeted that the Trump administration does “not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.”
Sessions vs. Sessions on Separating Families
Attorney General Jeff Sessions now says that the administration “never really intended” to separate families as part of its zero tolerance policy on illegal immigration. But Sessions had previously acknowledged that that’s what would happen under this policy.
More Bogus Border Claims
During the ongoing family-separation controversy, President Donald Trump and others have made false or misleading statements on several immigration issues.
Did the Obama Administration Separate Families?
In defending its “zero tolerance” border policy that has caused the separation of families, the Trump administration has argued that the Obama and Bush administrations did this too. That’s misleading. Experts say there were some separations under previous administrations, but no blanket policy to prosecute parents and, therefore, separate them from their children.