Lindsey Graham hit with fact check after repeating Trump’s immigrant crime claims

Ex-president has repeated figures suggesting the Biden-Harris administration has let in thousands of criminals – but the data tells a slightly different story

Lindsey Graham was fact-checked live on air by CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday after criticizing Kamala Harris for “crazy liberal” immigration policies — despite her endorsement of a border security compromise negotiated in the Senate that was also supported by some of Graham’s allies.

Graham was asked about Donald Trump calling Harris “mentally impaired” during an interview on State of the Union when he pivoted to attacking the vice president’s policy positions, a strategy he has often urged Donald Trump to take but with little success.

“I just think she’s crazy liberal. I don’t think that she’s... I just think the better course to take is to prosecute the case that her policies are destroying the country. They’re crazy liberal. 400,000 people have been let loose in our country. 16,000 people convicted of being rapists. 13,000 convicted murderers, and 400,000 people generally convicted of crimes were released on her watch,” Graham said.

Tapper then responded by saying that CNN had fact-checked the senator’s statement, and found that it was misrepresented to imply that such numbers of criminals had been released under the Biden-Harris administration. Those numbers roughly described migrants released from custody over a decade or more, including the entirety of the Trump presidency.

“That statistic is actually over decades ... and some of them are in prison. Not ICE prisons, but federal prisons,” Tapper said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Graham shot back: “I can tell you this: the man who killed Laken Riley, in Georgia, was released by the Biden-Harris administration.”

“I'm not saying she's crazy. I'm saying your policies are batshit crazy.”@LindseyGrahamSC responds to Donald Trump calling Kamala Harris “mentally impaired.” pic.twitter.com/VuzldJ1dk3

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) September 29, 2024

The exchange comes at a tense time for debate on immigration in the United States.

Public opinion has generally shifted in favor of tighter border security in the wake of widely publicized images and videos of massive crowds of migrants making illegal crossings at the southern border in recent years.

Over the last month, that conversation has exploded into ugly smears directed by Donald Trump and his Republican allies aimed at Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio and other towns — migrants who came to the US legally and were granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) by the Biden administration in 2021 amid surging unrest and gang violence in Haiti.

Trump himself highighted those smears at the presidential debate in Philadelphia, where he declared, “they’re eating the dogs!” and ratcheted up a hate campaign against Springfield’s residents which city officials say has led to multiple bomb threats and other racist harassment against the town’s residents.