If they do, I haven't heard any reactions so far. From the Master of Fact Checkers, Daniel Dale:
~ From CNN:
Click title link for video :
Fact Check: Trump Is Still Falsely Claiming That Mexico Is Paying For His Border Wall
Updated 9:35 PM ET, Wed October 14, 2020
"Washington (CNN)In 2016, President Donald Trump promised at his campaign rallies that Mexico would pay for the giant wall he planned to build on its border.
Running
for reelection four years later, the President is now declaring at his
rallies that Mexico is indeed paying for the wall.
"And by the way, Mexico is paying," Trump said at a rally in Sanford, Florida, on Monday. "They hate to say it: Mexico is paying for it."
"And
Mexico is paying for the wall, by the way. You know that. I've been
saying it. They hate to hear that. But they're paying," Trump said at a rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday.
"And as I said, Mexico is paying for the wall," he added at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday.
Facts First: This
is a lie. Mexico hasn't contributed any money toward the construction
of the border wall. The wall is being funded by the US government.
"It is, so far, all American
taxpayers' money," said Tony Payan, director of the Center for the
United States and Mexico at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public
Policy.
"As far as I know, there
is no basis for President Trump's comments that Mexico will pay for the
wall, period," said Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of immigration
practice at Cornell Law School. "They have not in the past, and I have
not seen anything to indicate a change in the future."
Trump has been making this claim since earlier in his term. It has never been true.
The
wall has been funded in part with US federal money appropriated by
Congress and in part with US federal money Trump has unilaterally -- and
controversially -- diverted
to the project from other programs. According to an official update
emailed to CNN in September by US Customs and Border Protection, Trump
is using $6.3 billion diverted from counter-narcotics funding, $3.6
billion diverted from military construction funding, just over $600
million from the Treasury Forfeiture Fund and just over $5 billion in
directly appropriated funds. (There are ongoing legal challenges about Trump's use of funds that were not directly appropriated.)
As
of September 18, 331 miles of wall had been built under Trump,
according to the official update. Of those, nine miles had been built
where no primary barriers existed before; 295 miles had been built in
place of old barriers the government says were "dilapidated and/or
outdated"; 27 miles were new "secondary wall" to reinforce primary
barriers.
The Mexican government
has helped the Trump administration on immigration in other significant
ways. For example, it has deployed thousands of federal forces to
intercept migrants before they reach the US. Some analysts have described this effort as a de facto wall.
Still, Trump's wall is a physical project that costs billions of dollars. And that money is coming from Americans.
Varying explanations
Trump has sometimes made additional false claims about how the wall is being funded.
In
February, Trump claimed that "redemption money" from undocumented
immigrants was paying for the project. Experts on immigration policy
said that "redemption money" is not even a real term -- and they said
Trump was still wrong
even if he meant remittance money, the payments immigrants send back to
their countries of origin; Trump never implemented his 2016 campaign
proposal to tax remittances to fund the wall.
Moments
after he claimed at the Monday rally that Mexico is paying for the
wall, Trump said, "We're putting a border tax on for cars and trucks
that go across. It'll much more than pay for our wall. Starting soon."
He said the same at the Tuesday rally: "You know, we're putting a charge
on where the cars go through. And it'll more than pay for the wall."
He made similar comments in August -- but the experts we contacted on Tuesday said they still did not know what Trump was talking about.
"I
haven't heard any concrete proposals for a border tax to pay for the
wall," Andrew Selee, the president of the Migration Policy Institute
think tank, said in an email. "It may just be the kind of campaign
rhetoric that always springs up at election time, or maybe the President
has a new proposal for a border tax in mind, but this doesn't appear to
have been a policy proposal from the White House or any agency that I
know of."
The White House declined
to comment Tuesday on our request to explain how Mexico is paying for
the wall or to provide any specifics about the supposed "border tax."
The Trump campaign did not respond to our request for comment."
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