Donald Trump's claim that Hillary Clinton wants 'open borders' doesn't hold up

Donald Trump’s claim that Hillary Clinton wants ‘open borders’ doesn’t hold up

A U.S. Border Patrol agent drives near the U.S.-Mexico border fence in Sunland Park, N.M.

By Kurtis Lee and Joseph Tanfani

Oct. 19, 2016 6:40 PM PT

It’s the foundation of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign: curbing illegal immigration and securing the border.

He has in turn accused Hillary Clinton of supporting “open borders.”

“Under her plan you have open borders,” Trump said at Wednesday’s debate. “You will have a disaster on trade, you will have a disaster with open borders.”

Clinton brushed that aside, saying she did support border security measures. The difference, she said, was that she supports more judicious selection on choosing which illegal immigrants to send back.

Yet the notion that Clinton supports “open borders” is misleading. The Democratic nominee does support immigration reform, which includes a path toward citizenship for the estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally. A recent study by the Pew Research Center has shown that the number of unauthorized immigrants in the country has held steady since 2009. Moreover, illegal immigration from Mexico has declined while increasing from Asia and Central America.

She doesn’t know what she’s doing except open borders and let everybody come in and destroy our country.

— Donald Trump, during an immigration speech last month in Phoenix

Clinton does support President Obama’s executive actions that would temporarily protect nearly 5 million people in the country illegally from facing deportation. Those efforts — Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — would defer efforts to deport people in the country illegally who have no felony convictions. Obama’s moves were blocked in federal court.

None of Clinton’s proposals suggests “open borders” that allow “everybody” to enter.

Her plan calls for boosting border security and “detaining and deporting those individuals who pose a violent threat to public safety.”

“We have a secure border,” she said at a Democratic debate last spring. “There’s no need for this rhetoric and demagoguery that still is carried out on the Republican side.”

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Kurtis Lee

Kurtis Lee is a former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. He wrote news features, narratives and enterprise on an array of topics — race, criminal justice, immigration, income inequality, the 2nd Amendment. He won first place in the 2021 National Headliner Awards for his series of stories about the COVID-19 pandemic on the Navajo Nation. Lee has filed reports from the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and chronicled Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency. Prior to joining The Times in August 2014, Lee worked at the Denver Post where he covered state and national politics. He’s also reported from the scenes of destructive wildfires and mass shootings and was a member of the Post staff that won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the Aurora theater shooting. He’s a graduate of Temple University.

Joseph Tanfani

Joseph Tanfani previously covered the Justice Department and Homeland Security in the Washington, D.C., bureau. Before joining The Times in 2012, he worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he was a reporter and investigations editor, and at the Miami Herald, the Press of Atlantic City and the Williamsport Sun-Gazette. He left in 2018.

Donald Trump’s claim that Hillary Clinton wants ‘open borders’ doesn’t hold up

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