Following President Obama’s announcement on Thursday night, during which he said that some 5 million illegal aliens will be protected from deportation, some “notable omissions” were made. The Associated Press (AP) was quick to compare Obama’s statements with the actual facts.
Perhaps the president’s most notable lie of the night was when he declared, “Although this summer, there was a brief spike in unaccompanied children being apprehended at our border, the number of such children is now actually lower than it’s been in nearly two years.”
To call the border crisis of 2014 a “brief spike” is not only misleading, but completely inaccurate.
During Fiscal Year 2014, more than 68,000 unaccompanied minors were apprehended at the Texas-Mexico border. This figure is up significantly from previous years. The AP pointed out that in 2011 only 16,000 children were apprehended; in 2012, 24,000 were apprehended; and in 2013, 38,000 were apprehended.
“The number of unaccompanied children apprehended at the border has been on the rise since the 2011 budget year,” the AP reported.
Obama also stated that the number of people illegally crossing the U.S. border is “at its lowest level since the 1970s.”
Again, that statement is not completely accurate.
” Indeed, in the 2014 budget year the Border Patrol made 486,651 arrests of border crossers, among the fewest since the early 1970s,” the AP reported. “But border arrests have been on the rise since 2011.”
Finally, the AP slammed Obama for making broken promises to the Latino community. “He overlooked the fact that he promised as a candidate for president in 2008 to have an immigration bill during his first year in office and move forward on it quickly,” the outlet reported. “He never kept that promise to the Latino community.”
The facts, however, did not stop Obama from stating during his speech, “When I took office, I committed to fixing this broken immigration system. And I began by doing what I could to secure our borders.”
Follow Kristin Tate on Twitter @KristinBTate.