Post distorts Karine Jean-Pierre's statement on immigration under Biden | Fact check

Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY
·4 min read
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White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre
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The claim: Jean-Pierre said, 'We’ve seen a 90% decrease in illegal immigration since President Biden took office'

A May 8 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) makes a claim about White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

"President Joe Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, was caught in a lie on Monday when she claimed that illegal immigration had come down by 90% since Biden took office," reads the post. "Jean-Pierre made the claim during a press briefing, saying that 'we’ve seen 90% decrease in illegal immigration since President Biden took office.'"

Similar posts have been shared elsewhere on Facebook.

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Our rating: False

Jean-Pierre did not say the quote attributed to her and did not say all illegal immigration has gone down 90% since President Joe Biden took office. Rather, she was referencing how illegal migration from four specific countries has gone down by 90% since Biden implemented a new parole program.

Jean-Pierre said illegal migration dropped over 90% due to a parole program

The post surfaced after a May 1 press briefing when a reporter asked Jean-Pierre how Biden wants to address the challenge of illegal immigration and whether he considers his job on the issue to be incomplete.

In response, Jean-Pierre said Biden asked Congress to take bipartisan action on the issue, and that he has implemented policies to “deal with the immigration system in a humane way.” She then highlighted one those.

“And that’s why you’ve seen the parolee program be so successful," said Jean-Pierre, according to a White House transcript. "It has – it has – it has – when it comes to illegal migration, you’ve seen it come down by more than 90 percent, and that’s because of this act- – the actions that this President has taken."

Jean-Pierre did not say illegal immigration has gone down by 90% since Biden took office, as the post claims. Rather, she was stating how unlawful migration from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela went down over 90% because of a parole program for individuals from those countries, Abdullah Hasan, a White House spokesperson, told USA TODAY in an email.

The press secretary's language, including her statement "that's because of this act," indicate she was referring to a statistic from the time after the act was implemented.

Jean-Pierre also clarified her remarks in a May 2 press briefing − before the Facebook post was shared − that she was speaking to the parole program when referencing the 90% figure.

The parole program was implemented in October 2022 for Venezuelans but was expanded on Jan. 5 to include Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans. It allows individuals to stay in the U.S. on a temporary period of parole for up to two years for public benefit or urgent humanitarian reasons, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Jean-Pierre was referencing data from Customs and Border Protection that found encounters of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans between ports of entry at the southwest border declined 98% from a seven-day average of 1,231 on Jan. 5 to a seven-day average of 46 on Feb. 28, according to a White House press spokesperson.

Fact check: As Title 42 ends, post falsely claims Biden has no plan for migrants at US-Mexico border

Another claim in the post is also wrong. The post says Customs and Border Patrol apprehended 221,303 illegal immigrants at the southern border in February 2023, making it the highest number of illegal immigrants apprehended in a single month since 2000.

In February 2023, Customs and Border Protection actually encountered 156,138 migrants at the southwest border. This is lower than in December 2022, when 252,012 migrants were encountered at the border, according to the agency’s data.

The figure in the post appears to originate from a federal court document that says the Department of Homeland Security reported 221,303 total encounters at the southwest border in March 2022.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the claim for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Post distorts Karine Jean-Pierre's words on immigration | Fact check