Lindsey Graham fact-checked Donald Trump’s claim that he is a migrant criminal

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, was fact-checked by CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday about former President Donald Trump’s claims about criminal immigrants.

As illegal migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border have increased in recent years, immigration has become a top issue, particularly among Republicans who blame the Biden-Harris administration for the situation. While illegal immigration increased significantly under President Joe Biden, it also increased in the final months of Trump’s term after hitting a low point caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In July, Newsweek reported, citing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data, that the average daily illegal crossing has fallen to under 1,800 daily encounters, a decrease of 55 percent.

On Wednesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released statistics on noncitizens convicted or charged with a crime.

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, then used those statistics to target Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, claiming that migrant criminal activity occurred under Harris’ watch.

“Kamala should cancel her press conference immediately because it was just announced that 13,000 convicted murderers entered our country during her three and a half year term as border czar,” the former president wrote in a post on his social media platform Truth Social Friday.

On CNN State of the Union On Sunday morning, Tapper showed a clip in which Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, called Harris “mentally disabled.”

“Only a mentally disabled person could have allowed something like this to happen to our country,” Trump said in the clip at a rally in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, the day after Harris visited the southern border town of Douglas, Arizona, and commented had committed to signing a new version of the border security agreement that she and other critics claim Trump killed when the Senate first introduced it earlier this year.

Tapper said Trump’s comments were an insult to people with actual intellectual disabilities and that Harris was not mentally impaired.

Graham, a staunch Trump ally, responded: “No. I just think she’s a crazy liberal.”

Asked by Tapper what he thought of Trump’s rhetoric, the senator said: “I just think the better way is to pursue the case that their policies are destroying the country.”

Graham then repeated Trump’s claims that only Harris was responsible for migrant crime: “Four hundred thousand people have been released into our country, 16,000 people have been convicted of rape, 13,000 convicted murderers and 400,000 people generally convicted of crimes have been released.” Clock.

Tapper then interjected, saying that CNN’s fact checker had investigated these statistics.

“These statistics actually span decades. So some of the people you’re talking about are people who came into the country during Trump.” [administration]. And number two, some of them are in prison, many of them are in prison — not in ICE prisons, but in federal prisons,” Tapper said.

Newsweek emailed Graham’s office and the Harris and Trump campaigns late Sunday morning seeking comment.

Trump and other Republicans have accused Harris of failing to address immigration and border security as vice president, blaming her for the increase in illegal border crossings and calling her Biden’s “border czar.” At the time, Biden tapped Harris to lead the administration’s diplomacy with Central American countries – El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras – to address the “root causes” of migration. However, she was never responsible for border security.

As Tapper fact-checked, Graham brought up Laken Riley’s murder: “The man who killed Laken Riley in Georgia was released on parole by the Biden-Harris administration because they had no capacity at the border to release him to hold on. That’s not a reason to release people on parole.

He continued: “I promise you: women have been raped and murdered. People have been hurt by illegal immigrants who were released into this country without detention. It’s a nightmare. It’s crazy.”

Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was killed during an escape in Athens, Georgia, in February. The suspect in her murder, José Antonio Ibarra, is a Venezuelan illegal immigrant who was granted parole into the United States “based on detention capacity at the Central Processing Center in El Paso, Texas,” DHS previously confirmed to Graham, according to a Senate hearing April press release from the Justice Committee.

Trump and his supporters have ramped up anti-migrant rhetoric since his first run for president in the 2016 election cycle, when he called Mexican migrants “rapists” who traffic in drugs and crime.

Meanwhile, the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan legal and policy institute, said in a May 2024 article: “Numerous studies show that immigration is not associated with higher levels of crime, but rather the opposite… If you look specifically at the relationship. ” between undocumented immigrants and crime, researchers come to similar conclusions.