Editorial: The Trump administration needs to find those 545 children’s parents quickly

 by The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board 

Two years after local judge’s order, White House still showing bad faith on family separations

By THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL BOARD

OCT. 28, 2020

4:31 PM

The Trump administration’s steamrolling of standards of common sense and common decency has been on relentless display in recent months. It has hindered mail voting by interfering with postal operations and removed the chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — for the supposed sin of reminding political appointees of NOAA’s formal commitment to scientific integrity on issues starting with climate change.

But there’s one policy that’s back in the news that may be remembered as the single cruelest adopted under President Donald Trump: the practice of separating children from their migrant parents at the U.S.-Mexico border when they were apprehended attempting to enter the U.S. illegally or in some cases when they sought asylum.

White House claims that this was done in the best interests of the 5,500-plus children who were taken from their parents beginning in El Paso, Texas, in 2017 have always been lies. Instead, this was straight out of the playbook of Trump aide Stephen Miller: discouraging would-be immigrants to the United States by any means possible, regardless of whether it took a brutal human toll.

Now court documents released this week show that more than two years later, the Trump administration still is not complying with local federal Judge Dana M. Sabraw’s June 2018 ruling issuing a national injunction against the family separation policy and requiring that families be reunited within 30 days. The documents showed the federal government had been unable to locate the parents of 545 detained children despite Spanish-language radio ads being aired in Mexico and Central America and the efforts of investigators who have traveled to Guatemala and Honduras in search of public records to establish links to the kids. There are another 422 children who are not seen as eligible for reunification because of their parents’ criminal records or health issues. There are also 104 children for whom officials simply have no contact information.In hindsight, there are obvious reasons why some parents of the 545 children might be hard to locate. As The New York Times reported, some parents may believe that their children are better off in the U.S. with relatives and family friends who have taken them in. And some young children might be unable to remember or share details about their parents that would help U.S. authorities locate them.

But that gets to the arbitrary way the policy was implemented. There is no evidence that border agents who separated kids from parents made a consistent effort to get information from the parents that would make future unification a straightforward process. Record-keeping has been an after-thought. When Sabraw’s order was issued 28 months ago, the government said it applied to 2,700 cases. Now the number has been found to be more than double that. This fuzziness is why Sabraw also ordered the federal government in 2018 to set up a database to track families detained at the border. A recently released affidavit from the Customs and Border Protection agency said the database won’t be fully functional until 2022. It’s hard to believe this delay isn’t one more sign of the Trump administration’s bad faith — or that another president wouldn’t do more to scrub this stain from history.

The family-separation policy should be remembered by all so it’s never repeated — and recalled by voters so they don’t return Trump to office.

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The Anonymous Trump “Resistance” Guy Has Revealed His Name, Which Will Be Useful for Booking Him Into Jail

 by Ben Mathis-Lilley

Photo illustration by Slate. Photo from DHS and by Tim D. Godbee/Released.

In September 2018, an anonymous official wrote in the New York Times that he was “part of the resistance inside the Trump administration.” The official said that he and other conscientious figures close to the president were “working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” The anonymous official went on to write a book that, as I understand it, made the same vague claim, except at book length.

On Wednesday, the anonymous official revealed himself. He is Miles Taylor, who worked in the Department of Homeland Security and has recently criticized Trump in other contexts using his real name.

Who is this secret voice of conscience inside the Trump administration? According to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News, Taylor was working as a deputy chief of staff for DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in the spring of 2018, the period during which the department began systematically separating undocumented children from their parents at the border by charging the parents with crimes. Nielsen, in a May 2018 Senate hearing that Taylor helped her prepare for, claimed that taking young children from their parents was not the ultimate goal of Trump’s decision to prosecute all border crossings criminally. But that message was contradicted by other administration figures at the time and has since been proved false by a memo that shows the policy was created because it was believed that taking migrants’ children from them would deter other migrants from crossing the border. Another BuzzFeed document shows Taylor telling Nielsen in May that he had sent her talking points about “protecting children”; a third shows her asking him and two others for help with public messaging on June 18 of the same year, when the public backlash against family separation was at its peak.

After all this, Taylor accepted a February 2019 promotion to be Nielsen’s chief of staff. When he left government after Nielsen’s resignation in April of that year, Google hired him as its “head of national security policy engagement,” which sounds very important. The company told its other employees that he was “not involved in the family separation policy,” a claim that appears to be false except perhaps in the limited sense that Taylor may have only been involved in defending the policy, not creating it. (He has been on leave from Google since August.) In an August 2020 interview, Taylor—who, again, accepted a promotion to work with the chief administrator of the family separation policy after it had become an international scandal, and who did not quit his job at DHS until she resigned—claimed that Trump’s attitude toward migrants was “one of the reasons” he left the administration. “People like me should have done more,” he told Noticias Telemundo. “Looking back, I wish I had laid my body on the train tracks and said, ‘We cannot implement this no matter what you guys tell us about resources.’ ”

In 2019, the New York Times reported that the youngest child taken from his parents by DHS during the previous year was 4 months old.

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Many Latino Men Are Supporting President Trump This Election

 by Laila Fadel

Supporters of President Trump wave during a Latinos for Trump roundtable last month at the Arizona Grand Resort in Phoenix.

Nick Oza/The Arizona Republic/USA Today Network via Reuters

Reymundo Torres is an Arizonan, a devout Roman Catholic, ethnically Mexican and a staunch supporter of the president.

"The thing that initially attracted me and keeps me tied to him is that he has taught Republicans how to not just win, but no longer throw our faces and bodies in front of every punch that the left is willing to throw," Torres said.

Torres likes the way President Trump takes no mess from Democrats or what he calls establishment Republicans. Also, Torres said, it's refreshing to see a president do what he says he's going to do despite criticism — from Trump's fiery tweets, sometimes filled with misinformation — to his controversial decisions such as moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a disputed territory.

Come Election Day top of mind for Torres will be Trump's remaking of the federal courts. The president has appointed more than 200 judges in his time in office. That, not immigration, is what Torres will be thinking of as he casts his ballot.

"My family's been in Arizona for more than 100 years. We don't see ourselves as immigrants," he said. "We're very much Arizonans and Americans. So to continue to treat us as if we're all still just fresh across the border, which most Republicans and a lot of Democrats would like to think we are — just to easily encapsulate us — is something that is not resounding."

The Latino vote will be key across the country, especially in tight races in places such as Arizona and Florida. This year, Latinos make up the largest nonwhite eligible voting bloc in the country, and according to polls, Torres is a part of about or over a quarter of Latinos who view this president favorably, with some polls showing Trump doing slightly better among Latinos in 2020 than he did in 2016.

And the backbone of that support comes from men. A New York Times/Siena College poll found that former Vice President Joe Biden leads by 34 percentage points among Latina voters, but with Latino men his lead is 8 points.

"Hispanic men in particular are a swing vote," said Michelle Mayorga, a New Mexico-based pollster who worked on polls for Equis Research focused on Latino voters. "They are a vote that we have to go and get."

In polls by Equis Research in key swing states from Arizona to Nevada, Latino male voters show much more support for Trump than Latina voters.

While Democrats are projected to win the majority of Latino votes overall, the margins are narrower with men.

"Republicans will take a larger margin than maybe they have in the past or enough that it will start to eat into the Democratic margin," Mayorga said.

It may sound strange. This is a president who has called Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers, who has been accused of race baiting and whose presidency is haunted with images of migrant children separated from their parents in overcrowded detention centers.

But the support tracks with a Republican Party effort to court Latino voters over decades. Republican strategists turned to Latino communities when they started to see African American voters fleeing the party in the 1950s and 1960s, said Geraldo Cadava, a historian at Northwestern University who wrote a book on Hispanic Republicans.

President Richard Nixon set the tone with politics of patronage and high-level appointments of Latinos, Cadava said. So this year is similar.

"It's kind of right in line with elections in the past. Ever since Richard Nixon's reelection campaign in 1972, Republicans have won somewhere between a quarter and a third of the Latino vote," said Cadava, author of The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, From Nixon to Trump.

"I would point first to the development over a long period of time of a partisan loyalty to the Republican Party. And Latino Republican voters just identify as Republicans above all else, just like many Americans. There is a kind of tribalism among Latino Republicans, just like there is among many Americans."

While some might expect that support to wane in communities who've been most severely affected by COVID-19 — losing more jobs and more lives than other demographic groups — Cadava said the Trump campaign's messaging has been successful on low unemployment for Latinos pre-pandemic, "law and order" (many Latinos serve in the military, police force and in the Border Patrol) and other issues important to Latino conservatives.

"It's been kind of amazing to watch, I mean, in some ways the Latinos for Trump campaign, which started officially in the spring of 2019, has been relentless in recruiting Latino voters," Cadava said. "They're actually trying to increase Trump's Latino support, not just kind of hold it steady or depress the turnout of Democrats. They're trying to win more Latino votes."

In Orange County, Calif., Randall Avila is counting on Latino voters to turn the county red again by flipping back four congressional seats the party lost in 2018 and holding on to the county seat.

Avila is ethnically Mexican, 30, and the executive director of the Orange County Republican Party.

"I've been called every name in the book, from coconut to many other things," he said.

But that derisive rhetoric doesn't faze him, he said. This party is where he feels at home.

"Our families and our communities, you know, really took care of each other and took care of ourselves. We weren't really focused on what is the government going to do for us," he said. "The independent spirit of our community really drove me to the Republican ideal of making sure that you're able to provide for yourself and your family, that you have that independence and that liberty to be able to start your own business or work where you wanted to, or go to school where you wanted to go and have those opportunities available."

His Christian faith also aligned him with the Republican Party on issues such as abortion. And while he said he probably wouldn't phrase things the way Trump does sometimes, Latino voters such as him are attracted to the message of lower taxes and lower costs of living, especially in California.

"I've never seen the Republican Party fight this hard to get Latino and African American votes," he said. "We have a number of Latino candidates, a number of Latino Republicans who are really stepping up and taking center stage. I'm hoping that that can be a better conduit to connecting with Latinos across the country and showing them that the Republican Party, there is a place for you here. This is your home as a voter."

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NBC moves Texas to 'toss-up' in presidential race

 by Joe Concha

NBC News has moved Texas, which hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976, from "lean Republican" to "toss-up," underscoring the close race between President Trump and Democrat Joe Biden for the Lone Star State.

Georgia, Iowa and Ohio are three other states won by Trump in 2016 that are rated as toss-ups by NBC.

The political unit led by "Meet the Press" moderator Chuck Todd also moved Arizona from "lean Democrat" to "toss-up," with polls tightening in the Copper State.

NBC's final battleground map forecasted an easy victory for 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on Nov. 7, 2016.

"In our final battleground map of the 2016 presidential race, Hillary Clinton holds a substantial lead over Donald Trump with one day before Election Day," a story at the time reads. "Clinton has 274 electoral votes in her column — which is unchanged from last week, and which also is more than the 270 needed to win the presidency. Trump, meanwhile, is at 170 electoral votes, down from 180 last week. And we have 94 electoral votes in the Tossup column."

With the election just one week from now, Biden leads Trump in the RealClearPolitics index of polls by an average of 4 points in the key battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida and Arizona.

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Biden retains slight lead over Trump in Arizona: poll

 by Justine Coleman

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden retained a slight lead over President Trump in the battleground state of Arizona in a poll released Tuesday.

An OH Predictive Insights (OHPI) poll determined Biden maintained the lead in the state with 49 percent support among likely voters, compared to the president’s 46 percent. Meanwhile, 3 percent of voters sided with Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen, and 1 percent reported being undecided.

Trump recorded 88 percent support among Republicans, and 54 percent among men, white voters and rural voters. 

The former vice president, on the other hand, documented 93 percent backing among Democrats, 60 percent among Hispanic and Latino voters, 58 percent in Pima County where Tucson is located, and 57 percent among women. 

As the candidates continue to work to ensure victory and Arizona’s 11 electoral votes, a majority of voters, at about 60 percent, in the state said they have already cast their ballots. A total of 23 percent are waiting to complete their ballot on Election Day, which is a week away. 

The Senate race also appears close, with Democrat Mark Kelly ahead at 50 percent, compared to incumbent Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) at 45 percent.

The poll found the statewide measure to legalize recreational marijuana seems likely to pass, with about 60 percent of voters backing it and 36 percent against it. 

OHPI conducted the survey over the phone between Oct. 22 and Oct. 25 and had a sample of 716 likely Arizona voters. The margin of error amounted to 3.7 percentage points. 

The poll comes as Biden and Trump make their last-ditch efforts to appeal to voters before Election Day. Trump is heading to Arizona and Nevada at the end of the week.

Previous polls have shown the former vice president in the lead in the swing state, with the RealClear Politics average putting his lead at 2.4 percentage points. Trump won Arizona in 2016 by 3.5 percentage points.

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Biden launches ad barrage, closing argument for Latino voters

 by Rafael Bernal

© Biden campaign

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's campaign on Tuesday released a series of digital, TV and radio ads across 11 states, laying out its closing argument to Latino voters.

The five ads aim to drive voter turnout as Election Day nears and the Hispanic vote stands to make the difference in many battleground states.

The ads' scope showcases the diverse nature of the Hispanic electorate and also the wide reach within the demographic, with smaller Hispanic communities in swing states like North Carolina and Wisconsin in a position to tip the scales.

The flagship ad, featuring the campaign's anthem, "Fronteras" by Gaby Moreno, will run on TV and digital platforms in Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin and digitally in Colorado, Michigan and Texas.

That ad, titled "Unidos con Biden," or "United with Biden," is presented in a mixture of Spanish and English and focuses on Hispanics exercising their right to vote.

Like the flagship, most of the five ads are bilingual, save for two that are in Spanish.

One ad, "Yo, Biden" — "Me, Biden" — has two versions, an East Coast and a West Coast version, as the campaign follows a national trend of microtargeting the country's diverse Latino communities.

The East Coast version of the ad opens with a baker talking about essential workers and the economy, moves on to a medical worker who says "because we combat the pandemic with science, not with intuition" and then to a store owner who discusses her immigrant parents' dreams.

The West Coast version opens with an avocado picker talking about how climate change affects Hispanics disproportionately, moving on to a mother who criticizes the Trump administration's family separation policy and then to a barber who mocks President Trump for describing Mexicans as "criminals" and "rapists."

The two versions are fully in Spanish, except for the words "criminal" and "rapist" quoted by the barber.

Both versions then turn to a doctor, a construction worker and an office worker, who each make the case for health care reform and following democratic norms.

"Canceled," a digital ad targeted at young Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada, switches between English and Spanish and talks about canceled proms, graduations and jobs during the coronavirus pandemic.

"El peor año, ever," says the narrator. The ad then cuts to Trump saying "it is what it is" in a July interview with Axios, referring to the pandemic's death toll.

"Wait, no it isn't," replies the ad's narrator in English, before switching to Spanish to make the case to support Biden and vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

The closing campaign's other Spanish-language ad will run on radio and digital in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Nevada, Virginia, Texas and Wisconsin.

It focuses on the Hispanic community's contributions to the United States, from essential work to being members of the U.S. military.

"In these elections, we are who will decide the future of our democracy," says a narrator in Spanish.

A final digital ad, running in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas and Wisconsin, is an English-language description of the Spanish phrase "ser humano" — literally "human being" — which can also mean "to be human."

The ad features a video of past Democratic and Republican presidents, including Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama.

"Ser humano. It means caring for all and leading with empathy, no matter the challenges," says the narrator over the historical footage.

The ad takes a swipe at Trump, while not mentioning him by name.

"It means showing compassion for your neighbor. You see, 'ser humano' can mean different things. But for a president, ser humano, to be one, can never be optional," says the narrator.

The Latino vote could make or break a number of swing states for the candidates.

The RealClearPolitics average of polls shows Biden with a 4-point lead in top battlegrounds.

For more information contact us at http://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/

What's behind Trump's project to defund 'anarchist jurisdictions?'

 by Austin Kocher- Opinion Contributor 

© Getty Images

On Sept. 2 President Donald Trump issued an executive order that called for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to withhold federal funds from what the president called “anarchist jurisdictions.” 

Later the same month, the DOJ identified New York City, Portland, Ore. and Seattle as “anarchist jurisdictions,” and began moving to withhold funding from these cities. New York may lose $7 billion in federal funding, including $1 billion in police funding. Meanwhile, nearly $2 million in funding to the Portland area and $4.6 million to Washington, D.C., is under review. If withheld, it will reportedly impact important health and safety programs, such as infant hearing screenings in Washington, D.C., and COVID-19 safety measures.

The president’s most recent attempts to politicize federal funding through the notion of “anarchist jurisdictions” is only the latest in a long line of strategies by political leaders to justify draconian policies by using imaginary legal geographies of disorder and chaos.

The intended and un-ironic outcome is that labelling cities as “anarchist jurisdictions” and then withholding funding based on that label, is all the more likely to stimulate inequality, disorder and social unrest — which then feeds back into the justification of the policy in the first place. 

If he gets his way, Trump will turn his fictional world of “anarchist jurisdictions” into reality, harming many people in the process.

And because these cities are home to Democratic majority voters, the “anarchist jurisdictions” label also feeds into Trump’s reelection campaign message of dividing the country geographically into red and blue states.

This is not the first or only context in which this strategy has been used. For example, as researchers at Princeton University have shown, the expansion of U.S.-Mexico border policing in the past quarter-century has relied on a similar strategy of claiming the border is out of control, justifying increased budgets and a border wall, which then led to unprecedented migrant death and contributed to the rise of violence and disorder along the border. 

Most recently, this logic has been used to justify the action titled Migration Protection Protocols (MPP), which, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University has required nearly 70,000 asylum-seekers to stay in Mexico during their asylum hearings under risky conditions and without access to an attorney. As a result, many asylum-seekers have faced homelessness and violence while waiting in Mexico, and many have even abandoned their claims for asylum, choosing instead to take life-and-death chances back in their home country or try to enter the country unlawfully. These outcomes feed into the misperception that asylum-seekers don’t show up for their hearings, which then could be interpreted to justify MPP in the first place.

As recently as the third and final presidential debate, Trump claimed that except for immigrants with “low IQ,” immigrants don’t show up for court. This claim contradicts a study from TRAC, which shows that out of 47,000 immigrant families seeking asylum, 85 percent show up for their first immigration court hearing. The number is even higher, 99.9 percent, for those who have an attorney. Regardless of the facts, Trump’s claim that immigrants don’t attend hearings — like the claim that some jurisdictions are out of control — feeds into an imaginary geography of widespread disorder that can be used to justify more illiberal and possibly illegal policies.

The president’s attempt to invent imaginary spaces of widespread chaos and disorder continues to raise serious legal questions. Just this week, the Supreme Court decided to hear arguments about whether MPP is legal. Likewise, the Trump administration’s  attempt to withhold funding from “anarchist jurisdictions” has also been challenged in court just this week.

It is important for the public to understand the political maneuver behind Trump’s rhetoric about “anarchist jurisdictions” in order to guard against the damaging policies that this rhetoric seeks to justify. 

Dr. Austin Kocher is a faculty fellow with the Transactional Research Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), at Syracuse University.

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Trump leads Biden in Texas by 4 points: poll

 by Max Greenwood

President Trump holds a narrow, 4 percentage point lead over former Vice President Joe Biden in Texas, a state the Democratic nominee has become increasingly eager to contest, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Siena College.

The poll shows Trump garnering 47 percent of the vote to Biden’s 43 percent. Trump’s lead is slightly outside the survey's 3.8 percentage point margin of error.

Biden is performing better in Texas among college-educated white voters than former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did four years ago, notching 38 percent support to Trump’s 54 percent. Clinton captured just 31 percent of those voters, compared with 62 percent who went for Trump.

But Biden’s support among Latino voters is softer than that of Clinton; the poll shows him with the backing of 57 percent of Hispanics, while Trump’s support matches the 34 percent he earned in 2016.

Among independent voters in the Lone Star State, Trump and Biden are statistically tied. Forty-one percent said they back Trump, with 40 percent supporting Biden. In 2016, Trump carried those voters by a comfortable 14-point margin, according to exit polls.

Democrats are making a late play in Texas as recent polls show a tighter-than-expected race there. Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), is slated to visit the state later this week. And on Monday, NextGen America, the outside group founded by billionaire former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, announced it is expanding operations into Texas with a six-figure investment.

A win for Biden in Texas would deal a massive blow to Republicans, who have carried the state in every presidential election since 1980 and currently hold the reins of power there.

While the presidential contest in Texas remains tight, those margins do not translate to the state’s closely watched Senate race. The New York Times-Siena College poll showed Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) leading his Democratic challenger M.J. Hegar 48 percent to 38 percent.

A Dallas Morning News/University of Texas at Tyler poll released over the weekend showed a slightly rosier outlook for Democrats. Biden led Trump in that survey 48 percent to 45 percent, while Cornyn led Hegar by an 8-point margin.

The New York Times-Siena College poll surveyed 802 likely voters in Texas from Oct. 20-25. Most of the interviews were conducted before the final presidential debate last Thursday.

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RELEASE - NLRB Chairman Responds to Congressional Questions about Ethics Program

 October 23, 2020, Washington D.C. – National Labor Relations Board Chairman John F. Ring today responded to Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representatives Rosa DeLauro, Mark Pocan, and Barbara Lee regarding the NLRB ethics program.

The text of the full letter can be found here.

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Biden fact checks Trump on 545 families separated at border, calls policy 'criminal'

by Rafael Bernal

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Thursday called a Trump administration policy that lost track of more than 500 separated migrant families "criminal" as the two sparred over immigration policy during this year's final presidential debate.

The Department of Homeland Security revealed earlier this week, as part of an order related to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), that it had lost track of the families of 545 children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Biden during the debate fact-checked President Trump, who initially claimed the children were brought to the country by "coyotes," or human smugglers.

"What happened? Their kids were ripped from their ams and separated and now they cannot find over 500 sets of those parents and those kids are alone. Nowhere to go, nowhere to go. It's criminal," a clearly impassioned Biden said.

ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt Wednesday explained on a call with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that the parents of 545 separated children have not been found. 

Of those 545, said Gelernt, the government has also not accounted for 362 children, and in 183 cases the ACLU and the government have identified the child, but have not located the parents.

After Biden corrected Trump's assertion, the president pivoted, accusing the Obama administration of beginning the policy of separation and building cages to detain migrant children. 

"Who built the cages, Joe? Who built the cages, Joe?" prodded Trump repeatedly.

The Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice president, did use facilities known as "hieleras" or coolers for migrant detention at the border, in certain cases for family detention.

But it did not follow a policy of family separation as a deterrent. That policy was put in place by the Trump administration reportedly at the behest of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Biden ripped Trump for the separation policy, which he said "makes us a laughingstock and it violates every notion of who we are as a nation."

Trump defended the policy, touting conditions at immigration detention centers.

"They are so well taken care of, they're in facilities that are so clean. But just ask one question, who built the cages?" Trump asked debate moderator Kristen Welker. 

For more information contact us at http://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/

Trump says 'only' the immigrants with 'the lowest IQ' return for their court cases

 by Justine Coleman 

President Trump said during Thursday’s presidential debate that “only” the undocumented immigrants with “the lowest IQ” returned for their court hearings under former President Obama’s “catch-and-release” policy.

Trump criticized the Obama-era policy enacted while Democratic nominee Joe Biden served as vice president. It allowed undocumented immigrants to be released from federal custody to return for a mandatory court date instead of holding them in immigration custody.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that a majority of these undocumented immigrants didn’t return for the court dates, but fact checkers have found that most immigrants do show up for their hearings. 

The president labeled “catch-and-release” as a “disaster,” saying “a murderer” or “a rapist” would cross the border, and “we have to release them into our country.” He claimed that less than 1 percent of undocumented immigrants showed up for their hearings, to which Biden responded, “Not true.”

“We have to send [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] out and border patrol to find them,” Trump said. 

“When you say they come back, they don’t come back, Joe. They never come back. Only the really — I hate to say this — but those with the lowest IQ, they might come back,” he added before moderator Kristen Welker cut in.

Biden replied to the president by saying, “I know the law. What he’s telling you is simply not true. Check it out.”

The president’s comments came after Biden defended catch-and-release, saying that most undocumented immigrants returned for their court appearances. Biden criticized Trump for being “the first president in the history of the United States of America” who requires those seeking asylum to do it in another country.

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