Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) lied about the situation on the southern border on Saturday as she launched false attacks on lawmakers who support the border wall but not her “Green New Deal.”
Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: “Gotta love how the same folks who tolerate+ acquiesce to building a medieval wall along the entire US southern border as a (non-evidence based) solution for a ‘crisis’ that doesn’t exist are now suddenly concerned that pursuing a nat’l response to climate change is ‘unrealistic.'”
Nearly everything stated in Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet, which was retweeted over 17,000 times in 12 hours, was either a lie or patently false.
First, Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that building a border wall is a “non-evidence based” solution for illegal immigration is a lie. National Review cites the following examples of where border walls have worked along the U.S.-Mexico border:
• Some 560,000 illegals were caught astride San Diego and Tijuana in Fiscal Year 1992, when a border wall was installed there. By FY 2017, the Border Patrol says it snared 26,086 — down 95.3 percent.
• A barrier between the Tucson, Ariz., sector and Nogales, Mexico, was erected in 2000. That year’s 616,346 arrests plunged to 38,657 in FY 2017 — down 93.7 percent.
• A fence installed at the border between Yuma, Arizona, and Los Algondones, Mexico brought apprehensions from 138,438 in FY 2005 to 12,847 in FY 2017 — down 90.7 percent.
Another recent example of just how effective border walls are is the wall that Israel built on its southern border several years ago, which cut illegal immigration by 99%.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted about the wall, writing: “President Trump is right. I built a wall along Israel’s southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea.”
Secondly, Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that a “crisis” on the southern border “doesn’t exist” is also a lie as it ignores facts and dismisses border experts.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said earlier this month that the U.S. is “currently facing a humanitarian and national security crisis along our southwest border.”
Even the left-leaning Washington Post has admitted that there is a crisis on the southern border, noting the “record numbers of migrant families” that “are streaming into the United States.”
Former Obama border patrol chief Mark Morgan told FOX Business last week: “It’s absolutely a national emergency. ICE doesn’t have any more room. Now, border patrol agents are having to release illegal aliens into … the United States — they’re overwhelmed.”
Lastly, Ocasio-Cortez’s insinuation that a proposal for a border wall is somehow comparable to her proposal to combat climate change is not accurate.
The border wall, projected to cost several billion dollars, pales in comparison to Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal,” which is estimated to cost $93 trillion.
It is the cost and fringe ideas presented in Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” that have led many, including Democrats and left-leaning organizations, to state that Ocasio-Cortez’s plan is “unrealistic,” not the idea of combating climate change.
Furthermore, the American Action Forum, which conducted a detailed analysis of the Green New Deal, concluded: “The Green New Deal is clearly very expensive. Its further expansion of the federal government’s role in some of the most basic decisions of daily life, however, would likely have a more lasting and damaging impact than its enormous price tag.”