During her Democrat response to President Trump’s State of the Union (SOTU), failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams claimed the United States is not “made stronger” by the presence of a border wall.
“We must all embrace that from agriculture to healthcare to entrepreneurship, America is made stronger by the presence of immigrants, not walls,” Abrams said.
A fact check by Breitbart News reveals Abrams’ claim that the U.S. is not stronger with a border wall is incorrect and readily debunked by data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which finds that where barriers and fences have been constructed in the past at the southern border, illegal immigration has dropped.
In 1993 in El Paso, Texas, a barrier was built at the border, and illegal crossings dropped by 92 percent in one year alone.
In Tuscon, Arizona, a border barrier was built, and illegal border crossings fell by 90 percent over 15 years. In the neighboring sector of Yuma, Arizona, illegal immigration has dropped by 95 percent over nine years after a border barrier was constructed.
Former DHS official Elaine Duke has previously chronicled the effectiveness of border barriers, noting that after the Secure Fence Act of 2006 “even under lax enforcement standards, apprehensions in Fiscal Year 2016 were roughly a 10th of what they were in FY 2005.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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