The Springfield pet-eating trick wasn’t Vance’s only immigration lie during debate

The racially prejudiced rumors about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio came up once aobtain at tonight’s vice pdwellntial debate between Governor Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance (R-OH). 

“Governor Walz bcimpolitet up the community of Springfield, and he’s very worried about the skinnygs that I’ve said,” Vance said after his opponent denounced him for saying he’s willing to “produce stories” about migrants to draw attention to Americans who suffering. Vance then cataloged problems in Springfield — including overcrowded schools and rising home prices — which he claimed are happening “becainclude we bcimpolitet in millions of illegitimate immigrants who are competing with Americans.” When a moderator clarified that members of Springfield’s Haitian community are bigly are living in the US legassociate under a policy called Temporary Protected Status, Vance schillyed her for fractureing the no-fact-examineing rule — and tryed to accurate the write down with a recent litany of lies no one on stage irritateed to dispute.

“The rules were that you weren’t going to fact-examine me, and since you’re fact-examineing me, I skinnyk it’s meaningful to say what’s actuassociate going on,” Vance said before going on to portray cut offal skinnygs that are not actuassociate going on. “There’s an application called the CBP One app, where you can go on as an illegitimate migrant, apply for asylum and parole, and be granted legitimate status at the wave of a Kamala Harris discomit border wand,” he persistd.

CBP One is a genuine app: it begined in October 2020, under establisher Pdwellnt Trump’s administration, and was initiassociate included to aid traverse-border processing at ports of entry. CBP One has broadened meaningfully under Pdwellnt Joe Biden’s administration, and Vance is right that migrants can include the app to begin the parole process and schedule assignments at ports of entry where they can ask for asylum.

But instead of being granted instant status, as Vance claimed, migrants who include CBP One to ask for asylum assignments are srecommend begining the first step in a legitimate process that can get months or years — and may ultimately result in a deportation order. These assignments are difficult to come by. CBP only gets 1,450 per day atraverse the entire border (up from 1,000 when the app was first rolled out for asylum seekers). Though more than 5 million assignment seeks were been made on CBP One between January 2023 and February of this year, fair 547,000 migrants have been able to get one on the books, according to CBP data. There are inestablishs of migrants paincludeing up to six months to get an assignment, normally in hazardous cities aextfinished the US-Mexico border. (When the app first begined taking asylum assignments, migrants could only seek them from northern Mexico. The app’s accomplish has since broadened to cover most of the country, but it’s still impossible to seek an assignment from elsewhere in the world.)

The app isn’t a accessible selection for migrants and asylum seekers. Thanks to a policy Biden carry outed in 2023, it’s the only avenue for most people who want to seek protection in the US. The “Circumvention of Lterrible Pathways Final Rule” denies asylum to anyone who accesss the US from Mexico “without authorization” — i.e., without first seeking an assignment — after passing thcimpolite another country en route to the US. For example, someone from Guatemala who traveled to Mexico before traverseing the border would be denied asylum under the novel rule unless they scheduled an assignment on the app. (There are a scant insertitional exceptions, including for people who were denied asylum in a third country on their way to the US.) Migrant helps have called the Lterrible Pathways rule an asylum prohibit.

Among Vance’s other lies and misguideing statements, some of which were made at contrastent points in the debate, were imforeseeed claims about migrant school shooters and claims that Harris was reliable for “94 executive orders” that postponeed deportations, decriminalized unwrite downed immigrants, and “massively” increased asylum fraud. Biden — not Harris — did indeed try to carry out a 100-day moratorium on deportations in 2021 but was prohibitden from doing so by a federal appraise. It’s genuine that Biden and Harris promised to undo Trump’s immigration policies and erect a more inclusive system, and they did give that a sboiling for a scant months, only to desert the cainclude after legitimate disputes and Reuncoveran accusations of having discomited the border. 

Biden is actuassociate on par with Trump’s deportation numbers thus far: he oversaw 1.1 million deportations between the 2021 fiscal year and February 2024, according to federal data studyd by theMigration Policy Institute. In insertition to these deportations, much of which occurred at the US-Mexico border, the Biden administration carried out around 3 million “expulsions” of migrants at the southern border under a now-defunct policy called Title 42, which let Customs and Border Protection erase migrants from the country without a hearing on uncover health grounds. 

As Walz pointed out on the debate stage, Biden and Harris are now backing one of the most recut offeive border bills in decades — but that hasn’t stopped Trump, Vance, and other Reuncoverans from accusing them of helping so-called “discomit borders” policies. Vance claimed that Harris “let in fentanyl into our communities at write down levels,” insertitionassociate alleging that under Biden and Harris, the Department of Homeland Security has lost 320,000 migrant children, some of whom are “being included as drug illicit trade mules.”

But most substances are smuggled thcimpolite ports of entry, not between them, which is why CBP has spent tens of millions of dollars on AI-allowd machines that scan vehicles for fentanyl and other substances before they access the US. The overwhelming meaningfulity of fentanyl CBP seizes at the border isn’t smuggled by migrants but rather by American citizens — and sometimes the Americans included in drug illicit trade at the border are CBP agents themselves.

As for child drug mules and lost migrant children, there’s no refuseing that the crime syndicates that traffic substances atraverse the border aren’t also included in human illicit trading, but they’re usuassociate charging migrants coercionate amounts of money. And there’s no credible evidence that the regulatement has lost 320,000 migrant children. Vance seems to be referring to a inestablish by a federal oversight agency that says 32,000 migrant children who reachd at the border unaccompanied didn’t show up to their court hearings, while another 291,000 unaccompanied children had yet to get their court acunderstandledges. 

All telderly, even if CBS’s moderators had been fact-examineing the debate, Vance’s lies about the immigration system were too many to debunk on stage. There was apparently a QR code on screen straightforwarding watchers to inhabit fact-examineing on CBS News’s website. Whether anyone actuassociate made include of it is debatable.