In response to the Des Moines Register publishing an op-ed filled with lies from Donald Trump, DNC National Press Secretary Sarafina Chitika released the following statement:

“As we head into an election year that will determine the future of our nation, it’s essential that Americans have the facts about the candidates in this race. No matter what Donald Trump thinks, the truth matters. Time and again, Trump has leveraged the media as a platform to spread his lies, and it’s the responsibility of the press, including the Des Moines Register, to take their duty to their readers seriously. Here are the facts that readers wouldn’t know from reading the Register today: Trump spent his time in office ripping children from their parents, fanning the flames of division, and making life worse for hardworking families. While President Biden has laid out a clear plan to increase funding for border security, stop fentanyl from coming into our country, and support safe, legal immigration, Trump is pushing lies and falsehoods to distract from his failed record on the border and his deeply unpopular agenda.” 

Trump claimed he created the “most secure border” ever, but illegal border crossings were 14.7% higher in Trump’s final year in office than in the year before he took office. 

FactCheck.org: “As for whether Trump left the strongest border in the history of our country, as we have noted, illegal border crossings, as measured by apprehensions at the southwest border, were 14.7% higher in Trump’s final year in office compared with the last full year before he was sworn in.”

Trump wrote that he built 500 miles of his promised border wall – which is about 450 miles from the truth. 

PolitiFact: “Trump’s administration built 52 miles of new primary border barriers — the first impediment people encounter if they’re trying to cross the southern border with Mexico, that can block access either for people on foot or for vehicles — where there were none before. … Replacement barriers and secondary barriers that are behind primary barriers don’t add additional miles to the southern border’s total coverage.”

Trump grossly overstated that he “got the Mexican government to deploy tens of thousands of soldiers to the border free of charge.” 

Newsweek: “This is a figure that Trump has quoted before in reference to a trade and security agreement signed between the U.S. and Mexico in 2019. In a report by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) think tank, which assessed the agreement, the White House reported that while 25,000 troops in a ‘new national guard’ were created since the tariff agreement, 10,000 were positioned along the southern border of Mexico to Guatemala. … An archived copy [of a 2019 White House press briefing], quoting former Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan, stated: ‘In addition, since June, Mexico has deployed thousands of troops. ‘They’ve created a new national guard within their country: 10,000 troops to the southern border; 15,000 troops to the northern border with the United States. Again, unprecedented support and cooperation with the government of Mexico.’”

The op-ed included no context for Trump’s extreme and dangerous promise of a “record-setting deportation operation” that is based off the racist and inhumane “Operation Wetback” from the 1950s.

New York Times: “In a public reference to his plans, Mr. Trump told a crowd in Iowa in September: ‘Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.’ The reference was to a 1954 campaign to round up and expel Mexican immigrants that was named for an ethnic slur — ‘Operation Wetback.’”

Washington Post: “Donald Trump’s ‘Humane’ 1950s Model For Deportation, ‘Operation Wetback’, Was Anything But”

“It was named after the disparaging term for Mexicans who arrived in America through the Rio Grande, and considered by many immigration scholars as a painful part of national history because of the documented abuse that Mexican migrants suffered during and after their deportations.”

The Hill: “The Eisenhower administration’s deportation policies have become infamous among many Hispanics, not just for the operation’s racist name, but for its tactics.”

HuffPost: “However, many people who have studied the mass deportation program view it as the opposite of ‘humane.’ The program expelled Mexican nationals and U.S. citizens, including children forced to leave with their undocumented parents.”

Slate: “It is true that Operation Wetback, which Trump has cited before, did indeed deport more than a million illegal immigrants—known pejoratively as wetbacks—by a variety of methods, driving many of them deep into Mexico to prevent them from returning. Many were transported on cargo boats from Port Isabel, Texas, to Veracruz in an operation that a congressional investigation likened to an ‘18th century slave ship.’ A riot broke out on one transport. Seven were drowned after jumping ship on another. Others were simply dumped over the border. In one roundup, 88 people died from heat stroke. Train-lifts across the borders were described by observers as ‘indescribable scenes of human misery and tragedy.’”

The Independent: “Former president Donald Trump has suggested he will deport millions of immigrants if he is re-elected in 2024. During an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, he was asked how long it would take him to ‘get things back to where you had it when you left’, if he was elected president again. ‘Very quickly, except for one thing: millions of people are in our country now that shouldn’t be here. Many of them are prisoners, criminals,’ the former president replied. ‘Would you deport them?’ Hannity asked. ‘The bad ones I would deport. Millions and millions of people have – they are poisoning our country. They’re poisoning – I’d like to be nice about it,’ replied Mr Trump.”

Trump vowed to “invoke the Alien Enemies Act,” which would allow him to carry out deportations without due process for migrants accused of crimes.

Axios: “[Trump] is eyeing the Alien Enemies Act — part of the Alien and Sedition Acts signed by President John Adams in 1798. Trump wants to use the often-overlooked law to quickly remove smugglers and migrant criminals — without having to go through legal steps in ICE’s deportation process — by claiming an ‘invasion’ at the border and labeling certain nationalities ‘alien enemies.’ That almost certainly would draw legal challenges.”