In a speech before the National Federation of Independent Businesses that was notable both for the level of vitriol and repeated claims to be above not just the law, but facts, one statement from Donald Trump stands out. It stands out not just because it directly affects how the nation deals with the family separation atrocity generated by Trump’s attempt to use children as hostages, it stands out in its utter disregard for reality.
Trump: They say, ‘Show back up to court in one year from now.’ One year! But here’s the thing. That in itself is ridiculous. Like three percent come back.
But the truth is that Trump’s claims are off. Not by a small degree. Not even by a large degree. But by an order of magnitude and then some.
Trump’s assertion that immigrants applying for asylum who are accepted into the country and given a court date, only three percent appear, is the latest in a string of such claims. For years, multiple Republicans have made speeches—many on the floor of the House—claiming that the number of immigrants who do not appear is “90 percent.” Notable among this group is self-proclaimed reasonable Republican Jeff Flake, who has been pressing this line on court-skipping immigrants at least since 2014.
Even if Flake and other Republicans were correct, Donald Trump would be off by a factor of three. But Flake and other Republicans are almost as execrable liars as Trump. Because the 90 percent no-show claim was also a flat-out lie, a number pulled from the dark recesses of Republican orifices to justify claims of a border “crisis” that didn’t exist.
At the time Flake was making his claims, the number of immigrants who failed to appear for a court date (including those who missed any date in the process, not just those who failed to show for the first hearing) was around thirty percent. In other words, seventy percent of immigrants who came in seeking asylum did appear for their hearings, all of them, and followed the process to its end. Which is astounding considering that the average wait for a first hearing was already 550 days and the average result was a refusal. It’s also astounding when some jurisdictions refuse asylum in over 90 percent of cases. Most immigrants appear for their hearings. Even though most are turned away.
Since Trump began encouraging outrageous abuses by ICE, from capturing parents at bus stops to waylaying people at doctor’s appointments, the number of immigrants not appearing for hearings does appear to have—not surprisingly—increased. But even as assembled by a right-wing pundit, the worst number that seems to be coughed up by real world statistics is about a thirty-seven percent skip rate. Two thirds of immigrants are still showing up for their hearings, even when they know that appearing means they have every chance of being turned away. No figures seem to be currently available comparing the areas were immigrants fail to appear, with those where they’re almost certain to be turned away, but a connection would not be surprising.
On Wednesday morning, Donald Trump was once again tweeting a defense of his family separation policy and attacking Democrats with the lie of “open borders.” But it’s critical to understand that, at least as the law is now configured, the options are to assign immigrant families crossing the border a date to appear, or to lock them up. That’s why Trump’s three-percent lie is so critical.
Trump’s lie on the immigrants who appear for hearings is designed to both make immigrants seem like criminals and make any options other than imprisoning them seem unreasonable. It’s a lie that has to be faced down, because it is there to support Trump’s stark “open borders” vs. “law and order” dichotomy.
At some point in the year, as many as 46,000 immigrants may fail to appear for a scheduled hearing. That’s the high end number. And it includes those who missed that hearing because of illness or inability as well as those who didn’t knowingly, purposely did not appear. But that’s a long, long way from the claims Trump is making. And of those immigrants who fail to appear, many are eventually detailed and deported.
Trump’s three percent lie needs to be confronted directly. Which is going to be a challenge. For all those reports of Republicans earlier using the 90 percent skip lie, none of the articles appear to show them being confronted about it, even those that went on to debunk the claim. So that number has been drilled into voters, especially Republican voters, for years. From that lie, to Trump’s lie, the distance is not all that great.