Racist rumors about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio resurfaced during tonight’s vice presidential debate between Ohio Governor Tim Walz and Senator J.D. Vance.
“Governor Walz mentioned the Springfield community that he was very concerned about what I said,” Vance said after his opponents criticized his willingness to “make up stories” about immigrants to draw attention to Americans who are suffering. Say after paying attention. Vance then listed Springfield’s problems — including school overcrowding and rising housing prices — that he claimed are happening “because we’re bringing in millions of illegal immigrants who are competing with Americans.” When a After the host clarified that members of Springfield’s Haitian community are mostly living in the U.S. legally under a policy called Temporary Protected Status, Vance scolded her for violating the no-fact-checking rule and tried to use a stream of new content to Correct this record.
“The rule is you’re not going to fact-check me, and since you’re going to fact-check me, I think it’s important to say what actually happened,” Vance said before going on to describe something that didn’t exist. . “There is an app called CBP One where you can remain an illegal immigrant, apply for asylum and parole, and get legal status at the wave of Kamala Harris’s open borders wand,” he continued.
CBP One is a real app: It was launched in October 2020 under former President Trump’s administration and was originally designed to facilitate cross-border processing at ports of entry. Vance is right that CBP One has expanded significantly under President Joe Biden, allowing immigrants to use the app to initiate parole proceedings and schedule appointments at ports of entry where they can apply for asylum.
But as Vance claims, immigrants who use CBP One to request an asylum appointment do not receive status immediately, but only begin the first step in a legal process that can take months or years and could ultimately lead to a deportation order. These appointments were hard-won. CBP requires only 1,450 items per day across the entire border (up from 1,000 when the app first launched for asylum seekers). Although more than 5 million appointment requests were received on CBP One between January 2023 and February of this year, only 547,000 immigrants were able to get an appointment, according to CBP data. There are reports of migrants waiting up to six months to get an appointment, often in dangerous cities along the U.S.-Mexico border. (When the app first started accepting asylum appointments, migrants could only request asylum from northern Mexico. The app has since expanded to cover most of the country, but it’s still not possible to request appointments from other parts of the world.)
The app is not a convenient option for immigrants and asylum seekers. Thanks to a policy implemented by Biden in 2023, only This is the path for most people who want to seek protection in the United States. The Lawful Circumvention Final Rule denies asylum to anyone who enters the United States from Mexico “without authorization” — that is, without first requesting an appointment — while en route to the United States through another country. For example, under the new rules, people from Guatemala traveling to Mexico before crossing the border will be denied asylum unless they make an appointment on the app. (There are some additional exceptions, including for people who are denied asylum in a third country on their way to the United States.) Immigration advocates call the lawful access rule an asylum ban.
Vance’s other lies and misleading statements, some of which were made at various points in the debate, included implausible claims about immigrant school shooters and claims that Harris was responsible for “94 executive orders,” The order halted deportations, legalized undocumented immigrants and saw a “massive” increase in asylum fraud. Biden (not Harris) did try to enact a 100-day moratorium on deportations in 2021, but was blocked by a federal judge. Biden and Harris did commit to undoing Trump’s immigration policies and creating a more inclusive system, something they did try for months but abandoned the cause after legal challenges and Republican accusations of open borders.
So far, Biden’s deportations are actually on par with Trump’s
Biden’s deportations so far are actually on par with Trump’s: He oversaw 1.1 million deportations between fiscal year 2021 and February 2024, according to federal data analyzed by the Migration Policy Institute. In addition to these deportations, most of which occurred at the U.S.-Mexico border, the Biden administration has also “deported” approximately 3 million immigrants at the southern border under a now-defunct policy called Title 42. The policy allows Customs and Border Protection to expel immigrants from the country without a hearing on public health grounds.
As Walz noted on the debate stage, Biden and Harris are now backing one of the most restrictive border bills in decades, but that hasn’t stopped Trump, Vance and other Republicans from accusing them of supporting the so-called “open borders” policy. Vance claimed Harris was “letting fentanyl enter our communities at record levels,” also claiming Under Biden and Harris, DHS loses 320,000 migrant children, some of them “Being used as a drug mule.”
But most drugs are smuggled through That’s why CBP is spending tens of millions of dollars on artificial intelligence machines to scan vehicles for fentanyl and other drugs before they enter the United States. The vast majority of fentanyl seized by CBP at the border is not smuggled by immigrants, but by U.S. citizens—sometimes the Americans involved in border drug trafficking are themselves CBP agents.
As for child drug mules and missing migrant children, it is undeniable that criminal groups that traffic drugs across borders are not involved in human smuggling, but they usually extort huge amounts of money from migrant populations. And there is no reliable evidence that the government has lost 320,000 migrant children. Vance appeared to be referring to a report by a federal watchdog that said 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children arriving at the border had not shown up for court hearings, while another 291,000 unaccompanied children had not yet received court notices.
All in all, even if CBS moderators fact-checked the debate, Vance’s lies about the immigration system were too many to expose on stage. There was apparently a QR code on the screen directing viewers to an instant fact check on the CBS News website. Whether anyone actually used it is debatable.
