AP FACT CHECK: Trump's skewed picture of border perils

AP FACT CHECK: Trump's skewed picture of immigrant perils underpins his extraordinary declaration of a national emergency at the southern border

By CALVIN WOODWARD and HOPE YEN Associated PressWASHINGTON — 46m ago

President Donald Trump describes drugs flowing across the hinterlands from Mexico, a federal prison population laden with criminals who are in the U.S. illegally and a Texas city transformed by a border barrier into a safe place to live. It's a misleading and in some ways false picture, and one that underpins his extraordinary declaration of a national emergency at the southern border.

Trump opened this past week with a rally in El Paso, Texas, and capped it with his emergency declaration Friday, a move taken to free up billions of dollars for a border wall that Congress refused to give him. Along the way, the president took unearned credit for developments in the auto industry, health care for veterans and trade with China.

As Trump played up the perils of illegal immigration, several Democrats went the other way, understating illegal crossings.

A look at a week of political rhetoric:

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https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/ap-fact-check-trumps-skewed-picture-border-perils-61118216