Monday, Aug. 5, 2024
Did illegal immigration drop 90% under Donald Trump?
Illegal immigration increased while Donald Trump was president. It did not decrease 90% as Wisconsin Republican Tony Wied claimed July 19, 2024.
Wied is running for the Green Bay-area U.S. House seat. His campaign cited a complicated chart on U.S.-Mexico border encounters that Trump has used at rallies, but did not identify what would back Wied’s claim.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has said his staff developed the chart and Trump modified it. Johnson’s office did not reply to questions.
News reports have repeatedly discredited Trump’s chart, noting the low point for border encounters is in April 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Southwest border encounters decreased 43% in 2017, the first year Trump was in office.
But they were higher in each of the next three years than in 2016, including 80% higher in 2019:
2016: 442,940
2017: 250,838
2018: 466,624
2019: 799,674
2020: 508,214
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
- WLUK-TV FOX 11 8th Congressional District Republican primary debate
- Google Docs Trump immigration chart cited by Wied campaign
- X (formerly Twitter) Sen. Ron Johnson post
- ABC News Dissecting the immigration chart Trump says saved his life
- FactCheck.org Trump’s Misleading Chart on Illegal Immigration
- Washington Post A look at Trump’s misleading, inaccurate graph of U.S. immigration
- New York Times Fact-Checking the Immigration Chart That Trump Says ‘Saved My Life’
- Google Docs Monthly Southwest Border apprehensions under Trump
About fact briefs
Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.
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