Yesterday, CBP acting commissioner Mark Morgan delivered a news conference in El Paso to unveil — and spin — FY 2019 border statistics. Morgan touted the supposed “successes” of the Trump administration at the border, noted that the ongoing “crisis” continues, and used those two assertions to push for even more draconian Trump policies.
The following is a statement from Douglas Rivlin, Director of Communications for America’s Voice:
Despite their orchestrated spin, the Trump administration’s border and asylum record is permanently defined by its failures, cruelty, and chaos.
They’ve caged kids and separated more than 5,000 children from parents; they’ve eviscerated our asylum program and fair hearings for thousands of vulnerable families; and they’ve sparked a dangerous human rights crisis through ‘Remain in Mexico’ and related policies. All are draconian, deterrence-only policy failures incapable of addressing the realities of vulnerable families fleeing violence and ones that double as morally repugnant choices that stain America’s reputation and moral authority.
And they keep lying about all of it – just yesterday, Mark Morgan said, “The message that is going out now is that if you grab a kid, it is not an automatic passport to the United States,” perpetuating the falsehood that there’s a surge of ‘fraudulent’ families trying to game the asylum system. But as immigration reporter Tal Kopan pointed out on Twitter yesterday, the new FY 19 stats released yesterday demolish that myth: in El Paso, for example, ‘there were 238 ‘fraudulent families’ identified out of 79,265 people who were apprehended as part of a family. That’s 0.3%.’
Don’t buy their spin and lies, don’t get caught in a numbers game, and don’t lose sight of the important bigger picture of what Trump has sparked and presided over. It’s a human rights crisis that shows no signs of abating and a record that calls for accountability, not more authority nor any declaration of success.
