Carmin Chappell
Published 10:48 AM ET Tue, 8 Jan 2019
Updated 3:56 PM ET Tue, 8 Jan 2019

Although President Donald Trump has frequently called the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border a "crisis," government data shows that arrests are down compared with the Obama administration as most illegal immigration occurs through overstaying temporary visas ...

During fiscal 2018, which ran through the end of September, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehended 396,579 undocumented immigrants at the southern border. That figure is lower than the 413,377 average yearly apprehensions during former President Barack Obama's time in office and only a fraction of the 1,643,679 apprehensions in 2000, when Bill Clinton was in office ...

Trump's claims about the southern border also fail to emphasize that the majority of illegal immigration occurs when immigrants overstay their temporary visas. During fiscal 2017, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) found that 701,900 immigrants with visas remained in the U.S. past their expected departure date, more than double the 303,916 immigrants apprehended at the border during that same time frame. A report by the Center for Migration Studies found this pattern to be true for every year since 2007 ...

The Trump administration has intentionally limited the number of asylum cases processed at the border each day, a practice known as "metering," in an attempt to dissuade immigrants from coming to the country. However, DHS has acknowledged that the practice "may have led to additional illegal border crossings" ...

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/08/despite-trumps-claims-most-illegal-immigration-is-not-at-the-southern-border.html

By Geneva Sands and Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN
Updated 6:39 PM ET, Fri January 25, 2019

... The policy, which officials have said would begin on Friday, would send some asylum seekers back across the border to Mexico while their cases are pending in US immigration courts.

"This is attacking the legal process, because it's discouraging people from following the law," National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd said.

"We are incentivizing illegal immigration and punishing legal immigration."

It's rare for the president of the Border Patrol union -- who supported Trump on the campaign trail and recently stood beside him in Washington to help make the case for a border wall -- to criticize the administration's immigration policies ...

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/16/how-americans-see-illegal-immigration-the-border-wall-and-political-compromise/

By Lucy Rodgers and Dominic Bailey
BBC News

... since Mr Trump entered the White House .. no construction on any extension to the wall has yet been started ...

Congress has so far approved $1.7bn in funding for 124 miles of new and replacement barrier since Mr Trump entered the White House ...

US Customs and Border Protection (CPB) says that, on average, it costs approximately $6.5m per mile to construct a new border wall or replace existing legacy fence ...

Officials at the US Customs and Border Protection agency have said none of the Trump administration prototypes tested in 2017 met its operational requirements ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46824649

He's an idiot as well as a liar and he's lazy. He doesn't know what exists, what needs to be done, and just wants the money.

JANUARY 16, 2019
BY JOHN GRAMLICH

... 2018 saw an uptick in border apprehensions (which are often used as a proxy measure for unlawful entries). There were nearly 467,000 apprehensions at the southwest border last year, the most in any calendar year since at least 2012. Still, the number of apprehensions in 2018 remained far below the more than 1 million apprehensions per fiscal year routinely recorded during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s ...

The vast majority of immigrants in the U.S. are in the country legally – but fewer than half of Americans know that’s the case ...

A majority of Americans (58%) oppose substantially expanding the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border – as Trump has sought – while 40% support doing so ...

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/16/how-americans-see-illegal-immigration-the-border-wall-and-political-compromise/

By David Nakamura
January 23

... Just 35 percent of Americans believe a border wall would make the country safer, compared with 57 percent who believe it would make no difference, according to a survey this week from the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research ...

... Cato’s analyses have concluded that crime rates among immigrants are lower than for the native-born. For example, Nowrasteh last year examined data from Texas — the only state that categorizes crimes based on immigration status.

He found that the criminal conviction rate for undocumented immigrants was 50 percent below that of native-born Americans, and the homicide conviction rate was 16 percent lower for the undocumented.

Texas is “a border state, has the second-highest population of illegal immigrants, is conservative and governed by a Republican, and it’s a state that doesn’t go easy on crime,” Nowrasteh said. “There’s no conspiracy in favor of illegal immigrants like people might try to say about California” ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/crime-will-fall-trumps-new-rallying-cry-for-border-wall-echoes-old-strategy-of-inflating-dangers-posed-by-immigrants/2019/01/23/ec24cda4-1f2c-11e9-8e21-59a09ff1e2a1_story.html

But he needs to buy steel from his Russian pals.

Maybe that's why he's so down about losing.

The emphasis on his beautiful concrete wall is shifting to steel.