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Verify: What's accurate and what's not from President Trump's speech on National Emergency?

What came under fire during the President’s speech were the facts he’s using to declare the National Emergency. We wanted to verify which statements are accurate and which ones are exaggerated.

HOUSTON — Speaking at the White House on Friday, President Trump declared a National Emergency on our southern border. During his speech, some of his statements were not factual - so we did a little research to determine what was accurate and what was not.

"So we have far more people trying to get into our country today than probably we have ever had before," President Trump said.

But the reality is that illegal border crossings are far lower than we’ve seen in the past. 

The U.S. government doesn’t have a way to actually measure how many cross the border illegally, but what it does measure is the number of those are caught crossing illegally.

Looking at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection numbers for Fiscal Year 2018, 396,579 people were apprehended at the southwest border. That number comes nowhere close to the highest on record, almost twenty years ago, in Fiscal Year 2000, when border patrol agents caught 1,643,679 people.

So we can verify that statement from the president is false.

In his response to a reporter who stated undocumented immigrants are committing fewer crimes than U.S. citizens, this is what the president had to say:

“Do you really believe that? You don’t really believe that," the President said. "Take a look at our federal prison populations. See how many of them, percentage wise, are illegal aliens. Just see. Go ahead and see.”

So we took a look, and found a chart from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. It shows American citizens make up almost 81 percent of the prison population. Prisoners of Mexican nationality make up 12 percent.

And a study by the Cato Institute shows in our state, 409,708 native Texans were convicted of a crime in 2015 versus 15,803 undocumented immigrants who were convicted that same year.

We can verify this claim that undocumented immigrants are committing more crimes is false.

President Trump said it’s necessary to build a wall because he says walls are 100 percent effective.

“Take a look at Israel. They’re building another wall. Their wall is 99.9 percent effective they tell me. 99.9 percent, that’s what it would be with us too," President Trump said.

So we took a look at Israel's wall, and found a 2017 Senate Committee on Homeland Security Report which states the number of illegal crossers from the Israel – Egypt border dropped from 16,000 in 2011 to less than 20 in 2016. That is a 99 percent decrease.

So we can verify the statement from the president is true.

It’s worth noting the differences in Israel's wall and the president’s proposal.

Israel’s wall is 143 miles; the one Mr. Trump wants to put up will be anywhere from 200 to a thousand miles.

Israel boasts high security along it’s wall, stationing one person every 1.2 miles. Currently, the United States has one person every 2.2 miles of its border with Mexico. 

So we would have to almost double our agents to get Israel's level of security and even more with the longer wall.

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