Trump spreads distortions on immigration

WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump spread distorted theories and numbers on immigration in the campaign’s final days while claiming economic gains for minorities that have not been achieved.

A look at 11th hour rhetoric before the elections Tuesday and the reality:

Median income

TRUMP, on attracting the nonwhite vote from Democrats: “We have the best unemployment numbers, the best median income numbers for all of these groups. We have the best numbers we’ve ever had. ...They should be worried about the African-Americans, because they’re going to lose them.” — Fox interview Monday.

THE FACTS: He did not achieve the best median income numbers for all the nonwhite groups. Both African-Americans and AsianAmericans had higher income prior to the Trump administration.

The median income last year for a black household was $40,258, according to the Census Bureau. That’s below a 2000 peak of $42,348 and also statistically no better than 2016, President Barack Obama’s last year in office.

Many economists view the continued economic growth since the middle of 2009, in Obama’s first term, as the primary explanation for recent hiring and income gains. More important, there are multiple signs that the racial wealth gap is now worsening even as unemployment rates have come down.

As to Asian-Americans, the median income for a typical household last year was $81,331. It was $83,182 in 2016.

Illegal immigration

TRUMP, on the practice of allowing immigrants caught crossing the border illegally to stay in U.S. communities as they await immigration hearings: “We’re not doing releases. What’s been happening over years is they would come in, re- lease them, and they would never show up for their trial. And we now have 25 or 30 million people in this country illegally, because of what’s been happening over many years.” — remarks Wednesday to reporters.

THE FACTS: It’s nowhere close to 25 million to 30 million, nor has the number increased much in recent years.

The nonpartisan Pew Research Center estimates there were 11.3 million immigrants in the U. S. illegally in 2016, the most recent data available. That number is basically unchanged from 2009. Advocacy groups on both sides of the immigration issue have similar estimates.

The number of such immigrants had reached a height of 12.2 million in 2007, representing about 4 percent of the U.S. population, before declining due in part to a weakening U.S. economy.

TRUMP, on tweeting a video blaming Democrats allowing a man to enter the U.S. who killed two police officers: “All I’m doing is just telling the truth.” — speaking to reporters Friday.

THE FACTS: The video he spread around does not tell the truth. It says Democrats let Luis Bracamontes into the country and “let him stay.”

Bracamontes entered the U. S. illegally, in 1996, dur- ing the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton, but he was also deported by that administration the next year after being caught buying crack cocaine and serving his sentence. He returned repeatedly. By the time he was sentenced to death in California for the 2014 killings of the police officers, he had been deported four times, according to Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones.

No evidence of leniency by Democrats has emerged in the episode. Democratic and Republican administrations alike have deported hundreds of thousands of people a year and no administration, Trump’s included,

has caught everyone trying to enter illegally.

TRUMP on what U. S. troops should do if encountering migrants who are trying to get to the border from Mexico: “I didn’t say shoot, I didn’t say shoot.” — remarks to reporters Friday.

THE FACTS: A day earlier, he said of the migrants: “They want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back. I told them, consider it a rifle.”

The procession has been largely peaceful. Some migrants in one caravan clashed with Mexican police at the Mexico- Guatemala border, hurling stones.

TRUMP: “President Obama separated the children from parents and nobody complained. When we continued the exact same law, the country went crazy.” — immigration speech Thursday.

THE FACTS: Actually, Obama did not do the same thing as a matter of policy.

While it’s true the underlying laws were the same, the Trump administration mandated anyone caught crossing the border illegally was to be criminally prosecuted. That policy meant adults were taken to court for criminal proceedings, and their children were separated and sent into the care of the Health and Human Services Department, which is tasked with caring for unaccompanied migrant children. Trump’s zero tolerance policy remains in effect, but he signed an executive order June 20 that stopped separations.

Jeh Johnson, Obama’s Homeland Security secretary, recently told NPR there may have been unusual or emergency circumstances when children were taken from parents, but there was no such policy.

TRUMP: “At this very moment, large well- organized caravans of migrants are marching towards our southern border. Some people call it an invasion. ...These are tough people in many cases; a lot of young men, strong men and a lot of men that maybe we don’t want in our country. ...This isn’t an innocent group of people. It’s a large number of people that are tough. They have injured, they have attacked.” — immigration speech Thursday.

THE FACTS: He’s given no evidence that people in the caravans are, by and large, dangerous, hardened criminals — after acknowl-

edging at one point that there is no such proof.

The migrants in the caravans are mostly from Honduras, where it started, as well as El Salvador and Guatemala. Overall, they are

poor, carrying the belongings that fit into a knapsack and fleeing gang violence or poverty.

It might be true there are some criminals mixed in with the throngs, given the

sheer number of migrants. Trump did not substantiate his claim that members of the MS-13 gang, in particular, are among them. The Homeland Security Department issued a sheet

stating that “over 270 individuals along the caravan route have criminal histories, including known gang membership.” But it did not specify how it had arrived at that number.

Some migrants in one of the caravans clashed with Mexican police at the Mexico- Guatemala border, hurling stones and other objects as they tried to cross the international bridge.