Debunking Charlie Kirk on immigration

Before and during Easter Weekend 2018, Charlie Kirk, founder and executive director of Turning Point USA, tweeted and spoke on TV about immigration. I will collect the moments and look at them one by one.

The conflation here between borders and walls is the first thing to notice. One can have a border without a wall; see Canada. Two, the wall here is put forward as a matter of national security. But “the wall” as thought of by Trump has been noted by experts to not be as effective as a combination of fences, sensors, agents, and more trade that keeps people from wanting to come to the US.

For example, the Heritage Foundation, a libertarian think tank in general agreement with Kirk’s libertarian opinions, wrote in 2009 a report entitled “15 Steps to Better Border Security: Reducing America’s Southern Exposure.” The word “wall” does not even appear.

Then there is the connection to illegal immigration or what Kirk calls “illegal aliens.” There is no source for this claim and it doesn’t matter because it is not true.

But what might Kirk’s source be? I am guessing a study by the right’s favorite gun advocate, John Lott. For problems with his gun research, look here. The conservative Washington Times published a story in January highlighting a study done by Lott’s organization on immigration and crime. The Times wrote about the study after Attorney General Jeff Sessions mentioned it.

The newspaper wrote that Lott’s report “used a previously untapped set of data from Arizona that detailed criminal convictions and found that illegal immigrants between 15 and 35 are less than 3 percent of the state’s population, but nearly 8 percent of its prison population.”

The newspaper reported Sessions noted that “[illegal immigrants are] more likely to be convicted of sexual assault, robbery, and driving under the influence. They’re more than twice as likely to be convicted of murder.”

Again, Lott’s research often has issues. The Cato Institute, again, says the opposite of his claims.

In a story in the New York Times in January, this was noted:

“But several studies, over many years, have concluded that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States. And experts say the available evidence does not support the idea that undocumented immigrants commit a disproportionate share of crime.”

Then the Times quotes one expert: “There’s no way I can mess with the numbers to get a different conclusion,” said Alex Nowrasteh, immigration policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, which advocates more liberal immigration laws.

The Times then notes the longitudinal studies that contradict the specific Arizona data studied by Lott:

“Analyses of census data from 1980 through 2010 show that among men ages 18 to 49, immigrants were one-half to one-fifth as likely to be incarcerated as those born in the United States. Across all ages and sexes, about 7 percent of the nation’s population are noncitizens, while figures from the Justice Department show that about 5 percent of inmates in state and federal prisons are noncitizens.”

For a superb deep dive into the relationship between immigrants and crime, look here.

The Cato Institute even wrote a study titled “The Fatal Flaw in John R. Lott Jr.’s Study on Illegal Immigrant Crime in Arizona.”

The Washington Post also has a fact check on Trump’s illegal immigration and crime claims. Finally, Politifact fact-checked this statement as “mostly true:” “undocumented people commit crimes at a lower rate than the native born.

On this claim, there is again no source mentioned. But it is most likely a Department of Homeland Security report from 2017 that was covered by The Washington Examiner in August of that year.

The Examiner’s story reads: “Nearly one-quarter of all federal inmates are illegal immigrants and virtually all are in deportation proceedings or already face removal orders, according to a new Homeland Security report. The Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons, fulfilling a presidential executive order requiring transparency on prisoner immigration status, said that it houses 187,855 inmates of which 42,034 are foreign born.”

But that also could be wrong. Factcheck.org in checking hard-line anti-immigration Rep. Steve King (R, Iowa) noted in April 2017 that “about 21 percent of federal inmates are non-U.S. citizens, but that includes immigrants who came to the U.S. both legally and illegally, according to government data.”

Factcheck.org added: “We don’t know the percentage of inmates in the country legally or illegally, because the agency doesn’t track their immigration status, BOP spokesman Justin Long told us.” The number of illegal immigrants in federal prison facilities may be about 4 percent, the site noted.

The Marshall Project also gives a compelling argument as to why we should try to rehabilitate (and not deport as Kirk argues) illegal immigrant prisoners like we do other prisoners.

The stats Kirk notes in this clip I will deal with in his next tweet. But the claim that the wall will be a symbol of our national sovereignty which “we have been losing over the last couple decades” deserves some comment.

As usual, it is hard to pin down a claim here from Kirk. What is “couple decades” and what does he mean by losing sovereignty? He seems to suggest what he notes at the end of the clip: “illegal immigration has been ruining this country over the last couple decades.” That of course begs the question what does he mean by ruining? His answer seems to be crime and drugs.

First, let’s point out that Kirk is at least referencing others here. In an October 2017 op-ed in The Hill titled “Trump’s wall is a symbol of America’s sacred sovereignty” a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations argued that “Trump’s ‘beautiful’ wall was a symbolic gesture of reassurance. It played on misplaced nostalgia for an era of ‘perfect’ border security, tinged with nativist unease that a white dominated America was receding into history.”

But as the quote makes clear, the writer is arguing people like Kirk are being misguided in their call for a wall.

The op-ed notes “sovereignty is sacred in the United States, akin to motherhood and apple pie. It implies that the United States must safeguard its constitutional independence, retain complete freedom of action, and shape its own destiny. As a talisman, it is easily exploited by political opportunists who exaggerate its vulnerability and propose outlandish schemes to protect it, while deflecting more sober deliberations about how best to advance U.S. interests. Trump’s border wall fits squarely in this category.”

The op-ed gives several reasons why Trump’s wall will be ineffective while also critiquing those who like Kirk incredibly want one: Trump’s “border wall is an apt metaphor for his mental map of America and its place in the world. It reminds one of what commentators said about Germany after the Berlin Wall came down: The nation might be reunited, but its inhabitants retained ‘a wall in the head.’ Today, a similar mental barrier prevents Trump and his followers from accepting the reality of a more diverse America.”

And by the by, taking a phrase arguing against him and retooling for his own use is a common tactic by Kirk.

Let me state that it is ironic a small government advocate like Kirk thinks “a few billion” is a “small price to pay.” Kirk has also said nice things about Trump’s budget and the GOP tax cuts that would increase government and the national deficit. Just goes to show you, people are complex.

Kirk again has no source for the first number. Politifact in September 2016 called “mostly false” a similar Trump claim that the cost was $113 billion.

Their conclusion: “Trump presented this figure as a hard fact to make his case, and not as the rough, high-end estimate that it is.

The figure “matches a 2013 study by a group that wants to reduce immigration, FAIR. It’s uncertain how much immigrants in the United States illegally cost taxpayers, but FAIR’s data is largely based on broad estimates and assumptions.”

On the next stat, it is important to note Kirk is not using “sex trafficked” here but he may be playing on the emotion of that phrase by using “trafficked.” And without a reference it is hard to know where Kirk gets his info.

One organization, Operation Underground Railroad, made the exact same claim, though about sex trafficking, and without a source: “10,000 of those children are smuggled into America every year.” The U.S. State Department estimates that 14,500–17,500 people of any age are trafficked into the country every year.

On the heroin, again, no reference from Kirk. No one is debating heroin is coming in from Mexico. And a lot of it.

But how is this connected to the wall?

The US Customs and Border Protection reported up to 2016 that the “southwest border” point of entry accounted for 83 percent of heroin seizures. That’s because, according to the DEA in a USA Today fact check of Trump’s wall and drug claims, “most heroin smuggled across the border is transported in privately-owned vehicles, usually through California, as well as through south Texas.”

In that USA Today story, another expert noted “the wall will not do very much to stop drugs” because “most drug shipments come disguised as commerce and are crossing the border by truck or in cargo containers. Human mules, to my knowledge, bring in a small fraction.”

This last fact points to the ineffectiveness of a wall stopping drugs like heroin. Would it stop or slow trafficking? Or do the same to illegal immigrants? Let’s address that in the next tweet.

The “tens of thousands of illegal guns” crossing the border has some merit, but ironically in the opposite direction Kirk implies: “Of nearly 105,000 guns seized in Mexico and submitted for tracing from 2009 to 2014, 70% came from the United States, according to data from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF),” as noted by the Guardian in 2016. And according to another report, “an estimated 2,000 weapons illegally enter Mexico from the United States every day. The report says 85 percent of the approximately 15 million weapons that were in circulation in Mexico in 2012 were illegal.” Though this 2,000 number has several issues, according to the report.

The problem of illegal guns in America does not begin in Mexico. It begins in America. The New York Times showed this in its 2015 report “How Gun Traffickers Get Around State Gun Laws.”

Obviously Kirk’s claim about gang members and illegal aliens carrying guns into the US has several problems. But mainly it is an argument to build a wall. Would a wall stop gun trafficking? In any direction? Here is one argument that it won’t.

As for the link between illegal guns and crime, consider “according to ATF, one percent of federally licensed firearms dealers are responsible for selling almost 60 percent of the guns that are found at crime scenes and traced to dealers.”

Again, no reference to anyone in the “media” saying this. While there are some calls for an “open border,” — see here, here, and here — they also debunk many of the false claims Kirk makes in his tweets.

Second, the link between drugs, trafficking, gang violence, and criminal activity because of a lack of a border wall is not only inaccurate, but also therefore unethical.

For example, on the gang line, here is a Washington Post story that does note a rise in MS-13 gang issues in the US due to teens who are stopped at border and sent to live with relatives and who get involved in gang activity. Trump made a similar claim in his 2018 SOTU speech: “Many of its members, he said, ‘took advantage of glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as unaccompanied alien minors’ and then ended up murdering American citizens.”

The Post “was able to determine that at least 14 young people [who now live in US after being stopped at US-Mexican border] were caught up in MS-13 violence after their moves to the United States. That includes eight charged in connection with killings.”

But again, these are people stopped at the border, arrested there. A wall would perhaps turn them away, but it seems the problem is less physical and more based in screening. But also these unattended minors are not necessarily members or associated with the gang when stopped at border. They become a part in their new US area. A wall won’t stop that, either.

Finally, we have DACA. President Trump apparently thinks people are fleeing over the US border to get the benefits of the DACA program. That is false. Kirk’s claim here is also therefore false,though Kirk broadens it to amensty. Both — Trump’s caravan tweet and Kirk’s sprinting — may be referencing “a migrant caravan assembled by the group Pueblo Sin Fronteras (People without Borders), which was discussed on Fox News’ Fox & Friends shortly before Trump published his tweet. It’s not known if the President watched the specific segment, but he indirectly referenced claims mentioned in an on-air interview with a Border Patrol union representative.”

CNN further noted that “it is not clear what the President was referring to when tweeting about ‘big flows’ of individuals taking advantage of DACA, since the program is not accepting new applications right now.” The Washington Post notes “to qualify, immigrants must have lived in the United States since 2007, have arrived in the country before age 16 and have been younger than 31 on June 15, 2012. No one arriving in the country after that date is eligible.”

It is not clear what Kirk is referring to with his claim to amnesty, but getting into the US illegally won’t help anyone get into DACA. It certainly might help one get amnesty, if indeed that is ever brought up. But such “sprinting” goes back to the idea that the wall will stop illegal immigration. And the Cato Institute gets the last word: “Why the Wall Won’t Work.”