Fact check: Ron DeSantis distorting immigration facts as he defends flights

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have both characterized their highly controversial efforts to send immigrants by plane and bus. The Free State as a way to raise awareness of the “historic” crisis at the U.S. border.

Mr DeSantis also claimed it was helping to crack down on illegal immigration.

“Biden cannot defend his open border policy,” DeSantis said at an event on Tuesday. “This has done enormous damage to our country.”

So how historic is the current border situation? Is Joe Biden creating an “open border” responsible for these trends? Are Immigrants on Martha’s Vineyard Flights Illegal in the US?

Here’s what you need to know:

Is there a record number of immigrants heading to the U.S.?

In fact, a record number of people crossed the U.S.-Mexico border this year.

Encountered more than 2.1 million migrants at the border so far in fiscal 2022, According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

As the Pew Research Center, this already exceeds the 2021 total and is only slightly above the records set in the 1980s and early 2000s pointed out in the analysis.

It’s worth noting that the record-setting 2021 also includes the final weeks of the Trump administration, but you’re unlikely to hear too many mentions from guerrillas like Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Abbott.

Is Joe Biden creating an ‘open border’ that drives immigration?

Republicans like to say that Joe Biden’s borders are a lawless place without any U.S. officials, and also paint his administration as one that erases the traces of the Trump White House’s hard-line policies.

“He inherited a border that wasn’t like that,” Mr. DeSantis said on Tuesday. “He created a crisis.”

This is not entirely accurate.

In fact, the Biden administration’s borders look a lot like the Trump administration’s.

For example, President Biden is still under construction The border wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, a project still unfinished at the end of the Trump presidency—may be “open,” to borrow DeSantis’ words.

The Trump administration’s controversial stay-in-Mexico program, which forces asylum seekers to wait for their applications to be processed on the Mexican side of the border, until June this year.

Mr. Biden continues to use Mr. Trump’s 42nd order to great effect.The policy is reportedly a so-called pandemic measure concocted by leading immigration opponent Stephen Miller Protest against the CDCwhich allows immigration officials to deny asylum seekers entry on Covid grounds before they enter the U.S. and pursue immigration procedures.

According to Pew analysis, the Biden administration has carried out the vast majority of Title 42 about 2.2m Evictions that have occurred since the policy went into effect.

Fired this year under Biden administration’s health rules August update Despite previous plans to abandon it, it appears to be on track to surpass the 1.07 million performed in 2021, According to border patrol statistics.

Border officials also point to all the usual, nuanced drivers of immigration to the U.S.—poverty, climate change, the legacy of U.S. foreign interference—political instability outside the U.S. is a huge factor.

“Failed communist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba are driving a new wave of migrants across the Western Hemisphere, including a recent increase in encounters at the U.S. southwestern border,” CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus said. Say in a recently released mandatory update.

Even during the Trump administration, draconian policies like staying in Mexico and Section 42 didn’t stop transiters from trying their luck again and again until they entered the U.S., analyze Border Patrol is over.

Jessica Bolter of the Immigration Policy Institute told the US: “There will never be a point of militarisation where the US can go across the border to completely stop all these flows.” independent At the end of the Trump administration.

“The environmental and safety drivers that drive people away, as well as the economic drivers, especially during and after a pandemic – there will always be reasons to migrate.”

Are immigrants on Martha’s Vineyard flights ‘illegal’?

Ron DeSantis also falsely claimed that immigrants on government planes to free areas were criminals.

In fact, they exercise their rights protected by U.S. and international law by seeking asylum in the United States.

After news broke last week about Mr. DeSantis’ immigrant flight to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, his communications director defended the policy, Say Deems “transporting illegal immigrants to shelter destinations” a legitimate use of state resources.

However, the 48 migrants on the plane, many of them Venezuelans, were legal.

They have presented themselves to immigration authorities and are awaiting asylum proceedings.

After arriving at the border and seeking help from authorities, asylum-seeking migrants must undergo “credible fear screening” to determine whether their return to their home countries would expose them to further persecution or threats. After being screened, they were released pending a hearing in their asylum case.

Just then, near the Immigrant Resource Center in San Antonio, immigrant groups targeted by people ostensibly working through Governor DeSantis’ operations were sent to Massachusetts.

Critics argue that the Florida governor himself broke the law.

Immigrants on the Martha’s Vineyard flight filed a class-action lawsuit against Republicans on Tuesday, alleging they were lured into flying cross-country with false promises of jobs, housing support and other services.

“Plaintiffs’ lives have been affected by violence, instability, insecurity and abuse of trust by corrupt government officials unimaginable to most Americans,” suit read.

“They fled to the United States in a desperate attempt to protect themselves and their families from gang, police and state-sponsored violence and political dissent. In short, the plaintiffs, and the similarly situated individuals they were trying to represent, in some way Fragile in a degree and a degree that is almost indescribable in words.”

Local officials in Texas are investigating whether Mr. DeSantis’ plan violated any laws.

Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom dismissed it as tantamount to kidnapping and urged the federal Justice Department to investigate.

Is mass immigration a big problem in Florida?

Governor DeSantis made himself the face of the anti-immigration movement with immigration flights to Florida, but one thing worth noting: Mass immigration was not a huge factor in Florida, and the flight itself was from Texas Immigration to Sri Lanka, a state that has more exposure to cross-border immigrants from Mexico.

“We’re not seeing a mass migration of them to Florida,” Mr. DeSantis said at an event on Tuesday, describing the slow migration of “onesies” into the Sunshine State.

The data supports this.

Border agencies including Florida, according to latest Border Patrol numbers About 400 times less busy Worse than those in the Southwest.