Assessing Trump’s and Biden’s Claims About Immigration and Border Security

Large numbers of migrant apprehensions at the southern border have vaulted immigration and border security onto the list of top concerns for voters.

Public polling shows support for former President Donald J. Trump’s hard-line approach, and President Biden, who made overturning Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda part of his platform in 2020, has recently reversed course and issued a more restrictive border policy.

But some of Mr. Trump’s most-repeated statements are inaccurate, in warning about the level of illegal immigration, characterizing unauthorized migrants as criminals taking advantage of government handouts and touting the effectiveness of his own policies. Mr. Biden, too, has occasionally overstated his earlier proposals on border security.

Here is a fact check.

Mr. Trump mischaracterized the situation at the border under his administration and Mr. Biden’s.

What Was Said

“We had the strongest border ever. I built 571 miles of wall. We’re going to add another 200 in three weeks. It was all made, all fabricated. They sold it for five cents on the dollar. The wall was all fabricated. I built much more wall than I said I was going to build.”
— in a May radio interview

False. During Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, he promised to build a wall spanning at least 1,000 miles along the southern border and have Mexico pay for it. That did not happen. Overall, the Trump administration constructed 458 miles of border barriers — most of which reinforced or replaced existing structures. Officials put up new primary barriers where none previously existed along only 47 miles.

Contracts were awarded for a total of 631 miles of barriers through January 2021, according to a Government Accountability Office report. When Mr. Biden took office and halted all construction, the contracted projects were in various states of completion — not “all made” — as officials had run into difficulties with real estate availability, the report said. Some were expected to wrap up by September 2021 and others by September 2022.