Fact-check: Durbin pins rise of asylum-seekers on Trump
Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin said President Donald Trump’s hardline stance on immigration has driven the nation’s current refugee crisis to all-time highs.
“What we’ve seen at the border in the last several months has been shocking and unprecedented,” Durbin said, speaking on the Senate floor.
“This get-tough president who says he’s going to cut off foreign aid to countries in Central America and get tough at the border with his almighty wall has ended up attracting larger numbers of people coming to the United States presenting themselves for asylum status at our border than we’ve ever seen,” the four-term Illinois senator said. “Dramatic increases we haven’t seen for decades in people at the border.”
It’s been widely reported that undocumented migrants are being intercepted by federal border agents or surrendering themselves along the border at levels not seen in decades, despite the president’s continued calls to curtail immigration.
But has that surge — still below the 1.6 million peak in southwest border apprehensions 19 years ago — been accompanied by an unprecedented rise in migrants seeking asylum? If so, is it possible to say whether Trump
played the central role in drawing them here?
We looked at “credible fear” claims. The first step undocumented migrants at the border must take to seek asylum is claiming to fear racial, political, social or religious persecution at home.
The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol website shows migrants making such claims at the southwest border rose in 2017 from 55,584 to 92,959 the following fiscal year, a nearly 70% increase. The Customs site didn’t have data for previous years.
A Durbin spokesperson referred us to an article about those recent border numbers but did not provide historical data. Still, there are other ways of tracking fear claims that suggest Durbin may be correct.
We looked at more data from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which screens migrants who make credible fear claims, and other sources.
By all those measures, the claim that asylum-seekers are arriving at record levels seems to check out, though not all track the southwest border specifically.
Immigration Services numbers, for instance, show that in 2006, about 5,000 migrants made credible fear claims. In 2018, it was more than 99,000. Those figures include claims of credible fear at all borders and ports of entry, but a majority come from Central American migrants.
This month, the Trump administration highlighted those numbers — a nearly 1,800% increase between 2006 and 2018 — in justifying a new rule barring most migrants who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border from applying for asylum if they have not first sought refuge in one of the countries they traveled through. That rule is temporarily blocked by a court challenge.
For decades, most crossing the southwest border without permission were single men from Mexico seeking work. Today, migrants more likely come from a violenceand poverty-stricken region known as the Northern Triangle: El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
And the number of border apprehensions involving families has hit record levels, according to the CBP. Groups with at least one child with parent or guardian now account for more than half of those seeking to cross.
While there’s a case for Durbin’s argument that asylum claims at the border are at a record high, it’s not possible to prove or disprove that Trump and his policies are the reason.
“There are so many factors that go into these decisions to migrate,” said Jessica Bolter, an analyst with the Migration Policy Institute.
Experts also said it is difficult to pinpoint what began attracting asylum-seekers in higher numbers this year and last.
“When Trump came in and announced his hardline policy and intention to build a border wall, I think that itself started people heading northward to get in before the wall was built,” said Douglas Massey, a professor at Princeton University’s Office of Population Research, who has studied border migration for decades.
However, Massey added, “There’s no really strong analytic way to show if that’s true or false.”
On the other hand, Andrew “Art” Arthur, a former immigration judge and an advocate for more restrictive border enforcement, argued that record high asylum claims suggest Congress is at fault.
“It’s not the president’s rhetoric but Congress’ inaction, both with respect to plugging the loopholes and with respect to providing sufficient resources that’s caused this huge influx of people coming to the border,” said Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors lower immigration levels.
Our ruling
Durbin said Trump “has ended up attracting larger numbers of people coming to the United States presenting themselves for asylum status at our border than we’ve ever seen.”
Despite some limitations, federal data does suggest the number of credible fear claims made by migrants seeking asylum at the southwest border has hit a record high.
However, Durbin’s argument that Trump caused the increase remains unproven and overlooks many other factors experts said could be at play.
We rate his claim Half True. The Better Government Association runs PolitiFact Illinois, the local arm of the nationally renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking enterprise that rates the truthfulness of statements made by governmental leaders and politicians. BGA’s fact-checking service has teamed up weekly with the Sun-Times, in print and online. You can find all of the PolitiFact Illinois stories we’ve reported together at https://chicago. suntimes.com/section/politifact/.