The statement: ‘The Biden government has created an immigration crisis on our border. They refuse to call it a crisis, even though the fears are worse than the ‘crisis’ that Biden / Obama / Pelosi acknowledged in 2014! “- Kayleigh McEnany, former press secretary of Donald Trump’s White House.
McEnany, now a Fox News commentator on the air, slammed President Joe Biden on March 8 over the influx of migrants to the U.S. border with Mexico, comparing the situation to a boom that Biden and other top Democrats faced years ago described in a horrible term.
Fact rating: Mostly true. Border officials recorded more cases of someone caught trying to cross the border illegally in January and February than during the peak months of 2014.
Discussion
McEnany made the claim on Facebook and Twitter, and again on a Fox broadcast.
She referred to detentions, which are defined by Customs and Border Patrol as “the physical control or temporary detention of a person who is not legal in the US, which may or may not lead to an arrest.”
But her comparison over years is a bit tricky, because during the coronavirus pandemic, not all encounters between Border Patrol and migrants were recorded as anxiety.
PolitiFact is a fact checking project to help you locate facts in politics. Truth O-meter ratings are determined by a panel of three editors. The burden of proof is on the speaker, and PolitiFact judges statements based on the information known at the time the statement was made.
“In 2014, the fear means that someone was arrested by Border Patrol when they tried to cross the border illegally between the ports of entry,” said Jessica Bolter, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “Today it’s a little more complicated.”
In March 2020, President Donald Trump called for Title 42, part of federal law, to allow border officials to expel migrants who want to apply in the U.S. quickly on the grounds that they are entering the country. and the immigration system can contribute to the spread of COVID- 19.
As a result of the order, migrants caught crossing the border illegally could now face one of two fatalities, Bolter said. They can be arrested and placed in immigration removal procedures, or they can be suspended immediately, in which case they would not start immigration procedures.
In January 2021, the border patrol recorded 75,312 encounters at the southern border between ports of entry. In February, it recorded 96,974 such encounters, according to the most recent available CBP data.
By comparison, CBP recorded 60,683 total anxiety in May 2014, the year’s high.
We should note that only 12,781 of the meetings in January 2021 and 26,791 of the meetings in February 2021 were committed under the CBP’s immigration authority. The rest were title deeds 42. This generally means that in 2021 the border patrol processed unauthorized border crossings at a much faster rate than they could have in 2014.
It also means that not all the migrants caught trying to cross the border illegally are detained in the country as they move through the immigration system.
Either way, experts PolitiFact spoke to said it was reasonable to combine, for the sake of comparison, as McEnany in her post, Fear and Title 42.
“If you look at them together, that’s the total number of times someone has been caught crossing the border illegally between the ports of entry,” Bolter said, noting that what was recorded today as an eviction from Title 42 was a fear in 2014.
“Border security statistics can be complicated and terminology is not always used in the same way we would officially use it,” added Matthew Dyman, a CBP spokesman.
FILE – In this December 2, 2020, photo file, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany speaks at an information session at the White House in Washington. McEnany has signed on as a Fox News contributor. (AP Photo / Evan Vucci)
Evan Vucci, STF / Associated PressA Fox News spokesman pointed to CBP data and examples showing that Biden, President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, used the word ‘crisis’ in 2014.
That year, the border saw an influx of unaccompanied children and families that was widely recognized as a crisis, Bolter said.
“It was kind of the first time the U.S. government had to deal with these mass arrivals of families and children, and they had to deal with it with an infrastructure that was really set up to carry out enforcement for single adults,” Bolter said. . “They were pretty unprepared.”
In June 2014, Biden spoke in Guatemala about migrants arrested at the U.S. border and demanding credible fear.
The Biden government did not characterize things this way this time. Biden’s secretary of home security said the border situation came down to a ‘challenge’, not a ‘crisis’.
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports low levels of immigration, said the current situation is more worrying than 2014.
“It’s worse because there are more people trying to enter illegally, and it’s worse because it’s happening during a pandemic,” Vaughan said.