Fact-Check Immigration & The Border

A 150-year analysis of U.S. Census data by Stanford and Northwestern economists found that immigrants have never been incarcerated at a higher rate than native-born Americans, not once in recorded American history since 1870. Today, immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born citizens. Undocumented immigrants specifically are 47% less likely to be convicted of a crime in Texas — the one state that tracks convictions by immigration status — and 33% less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans. U.S.-born citizens are ten times more likely than immigrants to be incarcerated for weapons offenses, five times more likely for violent offenses, more than twice as likely for property crimes, and nearly twice as likely for drug offenses. As the immigrant share of the U.S. population more than doubled from 1980 to 2022, the total crime rate dropped 60%. The Cato Institute — a libertarian think tank not known for liberal bias — confirmed these findings independently. Immigration researchers from Stanford to the Brennan Center to the National Bureau of Economic Research have reached the same conclusion: immigrants, including undocumented ones, commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans.

Springfield, Ohio’s Haitian immigrant community came to the United States legally, primarily under Temporary Protected Status following Haiti’s 2021 presidential assassination, earthquake, and tropical storm. Springfield’s Republican governor Mike DeWine called the claims about pet-eating “garbage” and said “the Haitians who are in Springfield are legal; they came to Springfield to work.” Springfield police issued a statement saying they had received “no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.” The claim traced to a fourth-hand post in a private Springfield Facebook group about a neighbor’s daughter’s friend’s cat. The cat-eating incident that circulated in images occurred 175 miles away in Canton, Ohio; the defendant was not Haitian and had lived in Ohio for 18 years. The man photographed with a goose was in Columbus, not Springfield; he told CBS News he “hates” that his photo was used to push false narratives. Trump repeated the claim on a national debate stage before 67 million viewers. PolitiFact named it their 2024 Lie of the Year. JD Vance acknowledged before making the claim that the rumors might “turn out to be false.” After winning the election, Trump has not mentioned Springfield since.

Trump used the phrase “poisoning the blood of our country” multiple times in 2023 and 2024 to describe immigration. Historians of fascism — including those at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — noted that “blood poisoning” language was used extensively in Nazi Germany to describe Jewish people and was a cornerstone of Nazi racial ideology published in Mein Kampf. Biological metaphors describing immigrants as contaminating the national bloodstream have a specific and unambiguous historical pedigree. The United States itself is a nation composed almost entirely of immigrants and the descendants of immigrants, with the exception of Indigenous peoples, who were here before anyone else arrived. The economic and cultural contributions of immigrants to American life — from founding the companies that built modern technology to staffing hospitals to building every major infrastructure project in the country’s history — are quantitatively documented.

Economists broadly find that immigration grows the economy, creating more jobs overall rather than simply redistributing a fixed number. Immigrants tend to fill specific labor market niches — both high-skill sectors (medicine, technology, engineering) and low-skill sectors (agriculture, construction, meatpacking) — that have persistent shortages of native-born workers. The Congressional Budget Office projected that recent immigration would add approximately $7 trillion to the U.S. economy over ten years. In industries dependent on immigrant labor — particularly agriculture — the alternative to immigrant workers is not higher-wage American workers taking those jobs; it is crops rotting in fields unpicked, as documented during periods of aggressive immigration enforcement. The wage suppression effect of immigration, where it exists, is most significant for previous waves of immigrants rather than for native-born workers.

Approximately 40% of undocumented immigrants in the United States entered legally — through airports, seaports, and official border crossings — and overstayed their visas. A wall addresses only illegal land crossings, which is one pathway among many. Most fentanyl entering the United States is seized at official ports of entry, often in vehicles, not in border crossings by foot migrants. Border walls can be tunneled under, climbed over, cut through, or circumvented by boats. The CBP itself has documented hundreds of breaches of existing wall sections. The 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border crosses extremely varied terrain including rivers, mountains, private land, and tribal territories where construction is legally and physically complicated. Trump built approximately 452 miles of wall in four years, almost entirely replacing existing barriers rather than building in new locations.

Undocumented immigrants are legally barred from most federal benefit programs including food stamps, Medicaid (except emergency care), SSI, Social Security, and most housing assistance. They do, however, pay into Social Security and Medicare through payroll taxes using Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers or borrowed Social Security numbers — contributing an estimated $25 billion annually into Social Security alone, from which they will never collect benefits. The Social Security Administration estimates that undocumented immigrants pay in substantially more than they draw out. Legal immigrants similarly pay federal and state income taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes (directly or through rent). The National Academy of Sciences found that first-generation immigrants are a net fiscal cost, but their U.S.-born children and grandchildren are among the strongest net fiscal contributors in the country — yielding a long-term positive return on immigration.

The right to seek asylum is codified in U.S. federal law (the Immigration and Nationality Act) and in the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, which the United States signed. Saying the word “asylum” does not grant entry — it initiates a multi-step legal process that includes a “credible fear” interview, screening, detention, and immigration court proceedings that can take years to resolve. The vast majority of asylum cases are decided in immigration court, not at the border. The immigration court backlog exceeded 3.7 million cases by 2024. Asylum is specifically for people fleeing persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group — it is not granted for economic hardship alone. Many asylum claims are denied; immigration judges reject a significant percentage of cases.

Approximately 40% of undocumented immigrants entered legally through airports or official crossings and overstayed their visas. This group includes large numbers of people from Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia — a demographic that receives essentially no attention in immigration discourse. The northern U.S.-Canada border stretches 5,525 miles, far longer than the southern border’s 1,954 miles, and has significantly fewer agents per mile. The top source countries for visa overstays include India, Canada, Mexico, China, and Brazil — a list that includes multiple non-Latin American countries that account for large portions of overstays. The framing of undocumented immigration as primarily a southern-border, Latin American phenomenon accurately describes one pathway while ignoring a roughly equal or larger pathway that does not feature the same demographics.

Sanctuary policies — which limit local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration detainers — do not prevent local police from enforcing state and local criminal laws. Studies published in peer-reviewed journals have consistently found no increase in crime in sanctuary jurisdictions compared to non-sanctuary jurisdictions; some studies find lower crime rates. The cities with the most restrictive sanctuary policies — San Francisco, New York, Chicago — have crime rates that, while elevated for various reasons, do not exceed or correlate with their sanctuary status. A 2017 study in the Journal of Law and Economics found that sanctuary counties have significantly lower crime rates, lower unemployment, and higher per-capita income than comparable non-sanctuary counties. The rationale for sanctuary policies, supported by many police chiefs, is that immigrants in the community are more likely to report crimes and cooperate with investigations if they don’t fear deportation for calling 911.

The American Immigration Council estimated that deporting all undocumented immigrants would cost approximately $315 billion to $967 billion, require a 10-year process, involve millions of legal proceedings, and cause significant disruption to agricultural, construction, hospitality, healthcare, and domestic service industries that depend on immigrant labor. GDP would decline by an estimated 4–6%. Social Security would lose billions in annual contributions. Many of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants have U.S.-citizen children, meaning deportation proceedings would directly affect millions of American citizens. The logistics require identifying, detaining, processing, and transporting millions of people — a government operation with no modern precedent in a democratic country.

The “Great Replacement” theory holds that a coordinated elite is deliberately importing non-white immigrants to replace white Americans. Undocumented immigrants cannot vote. Legal immigrants cannot vote until they become naturalized citizens, a process that takes years and requires extensive vetting. Naturalized citizens do not vote as a uniform bloc — Cuban Americans, for example, vote heavily Republican. Demographic change in America is driven primarily by birth rates and the aging of the existing population, not by immigration policy. The theory was cited in the manifestos of the El Paso Walmart shooter (23 dead), the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter (11 dead), the Buffalo supermarket shooter (10 dead), and the Christchurch mosque shooter (51 dead). Tucker Carlson referenced replacement theory repeatedly on Fox News before his departure; Fox later settled a defamation suit for $787.5 million unrelated to, though concurrent with, these broadcasts.

Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The Supreme Court affirmed birthright citizenship for children of immigrants in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). The 14th Amendment was passed specifically to overrule Dred Scott and guarantee citizenship to formerly enslaved people. Research finds that “anchor babies” do not meaningfully increase undocumented immigration — the child cannot sponsor a parent’s immigration until the child is 21, and even then, the parent must still meet legal immigration criteria. Trump signed an executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship in January 2025; multiple federal courts immediately blocked it as clearly unconstitutional.

According to DEA and CBP data, the overwhelming majority of fentanyl seized at the U.S.-Mexico border is found at official ports of entry, typically hidden in vehicles driven by U.S. citizens. The DEA has reported that most fentanyl is smuggled by U.S. citizens and documented residents, not undocumented immigrants crossing between ports of entry. The precursor chemicals for fentanyl are produced primarily in China and shipped to Mexico, where cartels synthesize and package the drug before it enters the U.S. through official checkpoints. People crossing the desert without authorization are the last demographic likely to be carrying contraband, as apprehension would result in deportation rather than the lighter penalties that incentivize smuggling for those with legal documents and established cross-border logistics. Enhanced detection technology at ports of entry — not more desert wall — is what law enforcement agencies cite as the primary tool to reduce fentanyl.

Family-based immigration — the official term for what critics call “chain migration” — allows U.S. citizens and permanent residents to sponsor certain immediate family members: spouses, minor children, and in some cases adult children and siblings. It does not allow unlimited relatives; each category has annual caps, backlogs measured in years or decades, and extensive vetting requirements. For Filipino siblings of U.S. citizens, the wait is currently over 20 years. Trump’s family immigration history: Melania Trump sponsored her parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs, for green cards and eventually citizenship through the family sponsorship process Trump calls “chain migration” and has sought to abolish. This was pointed out publicly; the White House declined to comment.

Trump’s central 2016 campaign promise was to build a wall across the entire U.S.-Mexico border and have Mexico pay for it. Mexico’s president said “Mexico will not pay for the wall” before Trump was inaugurated, after Trump was inaugurated, and whenever subsequently asked. Mexico has not paid for the wall. During four years, the Trump administration built approximately 452 miles of border barrier — of which the vast majority replaced or reinforced existing structures rather than extending into new areas. The full southern border is approximately 1,954 miles. The funding came from the U.S. Treasury, including $10 billion redirected from military accounts over Pentagon objections, which resulted in a legal battle and delayed military construction projects. Congress did not appropriate dedicated wall funding; Trump declared a national emergency to access military funds.

The Trump administration reduced legal immigration through executive action more aggressively than any administration in recent decades: it cut refugee admissions from 110,000 to 18,000 per year; suspended the H-1B visa lottery (later partially reversed); dramatically reduced H-2A agricultural and H-2B seasonal worker visas; curtailed DACA; ended Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of people who had lived in the U.S. legally for years; implemented the “public charge” rule making legal immigrants ineligible if they had used social services; and imposed bans on immigration from multiple Muslim-majority countries. The current legal immigration system has no pathway at all for most low-skilled workers; backlogs for employment-based visas from high-demand countries like India can exceed 100 years at current rates. “Come legally” often describes a process that literally does not exist for most would-be immigrants.

Trump claimed at multiple rallies that Venezuela had emptied its prisons and sent the inmates to the United States. No evidence supports this claim. Venezuelan migration was driven by the economic and political collapse of the Maduro government, which produced one of the largest refugee crises in Western Hemisphere history: approximately 8 million Venezuelans fled the country, primarily to Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and Ecuador, with a smaller proportion ultimately reaching the United States. A significant portion of Venezuelans who reached the U.S. came through legal parole programs. Deportation of Venezuelans has been complicated by Maduro’s refusal to accept deportation flights, a logistical challenge that predates and continues through the Trump administration.

Linguistic and cultural assimilation among modern immigrant groups follows patterns nearly identical to previous immigrant waves. By the second generation, the overwhelming majority of immigrant children speak English fluently. By the third generation, heritage language retention is typically minimal. Spanish-speaking immigrants assimilate at rates comparable to earlier waves of German, Italian, Polish, and Yiddish speakers — groups who maintained newspapers, churches, and community institutions in their native languages for one to two generations before their descendants became fully English-dominant. The same critique of non-assimilation was made about Irish, Italian, Eastern European Jewish, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants — each of whom was described at the time as uniquely resistant to assimilation and now constitute parts of what is considered mainstream American culture.

The United States has a population density of approximately 94 people per square mile, compared to Germany’s 601, the United Kingdom’s 727, Japan’s 347, and the Netherlands’ 1,087. Much of America’s interior — Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Kansas, Nebraska — is genuinely sparsely populated, with some counties having fewer than 1 person per square mile. The United States has among the lowest fertility rates in its history, and economists project labor shortages in healthcare, agriculture, construction, eldercare, and technology in the coming decades. The Social Security system’s long-term solvency depends on a growing working-age population. Japan, South Korea, and Italy — countries with strict immigration and very low birth rates — are experiencing severe demographic and economic crises precisely because they ran out of young workers.

Border encounters were high during Trump’s first term as well, reaching record levels in 2019 before the COVID pandemic temporarily suppressed global migration. The structural drivers of migration — violence and instability in Central America and Venezuela, economic deprivation, climate disruption of agricultural zones, and family separation — predate both the Trump and Biden administrations by decades. The immigration system’s legal capacity, court backlog, and detention infrastructure were already strained under Trump. The Remain in Mexico policy (MPP), Asylum Cooperative Agreements, and Title 42 public health expulsions that Biden dismantled had mixed effectiveness records and were subject to ongoing legal challenges. Immigration enforcement is an inherently complex, multi-decade policy challenge with no administration on either side having found a durable solution.