Are border crossings at "historically low levels," as David Price says?

By
Bill McCarthy
Friday, February 22, 2019 at 16:02

President Donald Trump's statement of a national emergency on the US border with Mexico has sent congressional Democrats scrambling to defend his case of building a wall.

"Not only is there no national border emergency: the crossings remain at historically low levels," said David Price, NS, February 14. tweet.

Price, who represents the 4th Congressional District of North Carolina, which includes Orange County and parts of Wake and Durham counties, is not the first to argue this argument.

But we wondered if the number of apprehensions of border patrols – generally used by statistical experts to measure illegal border crossing – had changed a lot since the last audit, so we decided to give a new look to Price's statement.

Katelynn Vogt, Price's Director of Communications, spoke about a Congressional Research Service FAQ dated January 2019, a USA Today article, and related New York Times and NPR checks as evidence in support of assertion.

"Since the peak reached in 2000, there has been a clear downward trend in apprehensions at the southern border," she said. "Although the specific number has fluctuated from one year to the next, including a slight rise for 2018, it remains at historically low levels."

The CRS report and the US Border Patrol data indicate that apprehensions at the south-west border began to steadily increase in 1960 and peaked at about 1.64 million in 2000. They then reached their lowest level in 30 years old, with 303,916 in 2017. (263,991 apprehensions in 1971 and only 21,022 in 1960.)

But, as noted by Vogt, these arrests have rebounded somewhat in 2018 to reach 396,579.

Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank on immigration in Washington, noted that apprehensions were at their lowest in the 1960s, even though they had been "sharply down" since 2006. – the last time. there were more than one million a year.

She added that the downturn in 2017 resulted mainly from Trump's election and his government's severe immigration policy, which resulted in "a temporary slowdown in apprehensions" for a few months before "these numbers do not find much of their usual seasonal habits.

But if you limit the scope of the period, the claim is more precise. Ev Meade, director of the Trans-Border Institute of the University of San Diego, said that "we are currently experiencing the lowest number of borders," said PolitiFact California's president, during his speech on the # 39, state of the state Gavin Newsom government. Crossings since 1971 "was" basically true "given the long-term trend.

"It has been up and down," said Meade. "There have been some variations, but the long downward trend continues."

Price's statement was less precise than that of Newsom, and also less precise than a similar statement that had won the former California governor, Jerry Brown, to be attributed the truth to him. " last year. While both governors gave specific timelines as benchmarks for their comparisons, Price said that grade crossings "remain at historically low levels", which the average reader might assume to be at the same level or at the lowest levels. lowest ever recorded.

Our decision

Price said that "crossings (at the border) remain at historically low levels".

The number of border patrol arrests in 2017 was the lowest in 45 years and in 2018 it is slightly higher but remains low, especially compared to the peak of 2000. The number of illegal crossings has decreased. # 39; year.

However, the total number of apprehensions was much lower in the 1960s, so a more accurate statement would have indicated that crossings in 2017 were the lowest since 1971.

We evaluate the statement Mostly True.

This story was produced by the North Carolina Fact-Finding Project, a partnership of McClatchy Carolinas, the Duke University Reporters Laboratory and PolitiFact. The NC Local News Lab Fund and the International Center for Journalists support the project, which shares fact-finding with newsrooms across the country. To offer fact-checking ideas, send an e-mail [email protected]