Fact check: Did the U.S. set new record for immigrant border crossings?
U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis, tweeted: "With three months remaining in the Fiscal Year, (the border patrol) has already encountered more illegal immigrants along the Southwest border" than in any previous fiscal year. PolitiFact checks his claim.
Posted — UpdatedImmigration has always been at the forefront of U.S. politics — particularly in election years.
In 2022, the focus has been on the long federal court battle surrounding the "Remain in Mexico" policy, instituted by former President Donald Trump, which forced thousands of asylum seekers to wait for court hearings in Mexico, instead of the U.S.
Some argue that has exacerbated the illegal crossings, as there is little drawback to trying again while waiting for a court hearing.
Republicans blame President Joe Biden for the surge.
"With three months remaining in the Fiscal Year, (the border patrol) has already encountered more illegal immigrants along the Southwest border" than in any previous fiscal year.
Is he right?
Apprehensions soar, but analysts call numbers misleading
Those numbers show that as of July 2022, the number of apprehensions at the southwest border had reached roughly 1.94 million for fiscal year 2022, which won’t end until September.
In April, May and June, apprehensions consistently topped 200,000. July dipped just below that threshold, with 199,976. All of that has carried apprehensions past the previous record, of 1.73 million apprehensions set in 2021.
There was a similar spike in fiscal year 2000, which reported 1.64 million apprehensions at the border. And the previous high was during Fiscal Year 1986, when apprehensions reached 1.62 million.
The government’s earliest apprehension records date back to 1925.
Why? Because sometimes it’s the same person attempting to cross multiple times.
In the same news release, the agency broke down the numbers:
- In total, there were 207,416 apprehensions along the southwest border in June.
- But of that number, 26% had at least one prior apprehension in the last 12 months.
- The number of unique individuals apprehended in June was 153,379.
So, that’s an important caveat to Grothman’s claim.
(Sidenote: That report came out three days before Grothman’s tweet, so this information was available to him)
PolitiFact ruling
Grothman claimed: "With three months remaining in the Fiscal Year, (the border patrol) has already encountered more illegal immigrants along the Southwest border" than in any previous fiscal year.
The numbers show Grothman is accurate, but in making a stark point with stark numbers, he skipped past an important nuance.
The "Remain in Mexico" policy has meant more repeat efforts to cross, since under the previous policy asylum-seekers would wait for their court date in the U.S. Thus, that is a key factor in the increase, which overstates the actual number of individuals who were stopped.
Our definition for Mostly True is "The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information."
That fits here.
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