Fact-checking Trump's immigration and One Big Beautiful Bill claims

Al Jazeera

17 hours ago

United States President Donald Trump has toured Florida's Alligator Alcatraz immigration detention facility in the Everglades before it gets its first detainees.
'It's known as Alligator Alcatraz, which is very appropriate because I looked outside and that's not a place I want to go hiking,' Trump told the media during a livestreamed event on Tuesday. 'But very soon, this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet.'
Trump campaigned for the presidency on promises to tackle immigration but faces a shortage of detention beds. The One Big Beautiful Bill, Trump's tax and spending plan, passed the Senate during his Florida stop and includes $150bn for his deportation agenda over four years.
State officials quickly built the expected 5,000-bed facility to detain immigrants on top of a decades-old landing strip. The Department of Homeland Security pegged the one-year cost of running the facility at $450m, which it plans to pay for with money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Shelter and Services Program.
Florida officials, including former Trump rival Governor Ron DeSantis, joined the president and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for the tour. DeSantis said Noem's team told him the facility would be opened to receive detainees after Trump's departure.
Trump talked for more than an hour as he deflected questions about who could lose Medicaid healthcare coverage under the tax and spending legislation, warmly responded to a suggestion to arrest former President Joe Biden's Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and repeated a frequent complaint about shower heads lacking sufficient water pressure. Noem, meanwhile, said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement had detained a 'cannibal' who 'started to eat himself' on an airplane.
Here is a fact check of some of Trump's remarks:
Trump's 'illegal alien' cost estimate comes from group that advocates for low immigration levels
While talking about the goal of cutting the federal budget, Trump said: 'The average illegal alien costs American taxpayers an estimated $70,000.'
That is a lifetime estimate by an organisation that supports low levels of immigration. Critics have taken issue with it.
The White House quoted 2024 testimony to a committee in the House of Representatives by Steven A Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies.
Camarota said in written testimony: 'The lifetime fiscal drain (taxes paid minus costs) for each illegal immigrant is about $68,000.' He based his estimate on immigrants' net fiscal impact by education level.
Camarota said the estimate came with caveats, including what percentage of immigrants in the US illegally were using welfare programmes and the amount of benefits they received and their use of public schools and emergency services.
Other analyses show positive economic effects from undocumented immigrants in the US.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan research arm of Congress, in a 2024 report found both costs and benefits from the Biden-era immigration increase. On net, CBO found, the impact was positive in several areas.
The CBO estimated an $8.9 trillion boost to the gross domestic product – a measurement of overall economic activity – over 10 years because of the immigration surge, which would improve wages, salaries and corporate profits. The CBO also estimated that federal deficits would decline by almost $1 trillion over 10 years because of increased tax revenues from immigrants, which the agency estimated would outweigh the costs they imposed in the form of additional federal outlays.
Separately, the libertarian Cato Institute in 2023 found 'immigrants generate nearly $1 trillion (in 2024 dollars) in state, local and federal taxes, which is almost $300 billion more than they receive in government benefits, including cash assistance, entitlements, and public education.'
Michael A Clemens, a George Mason University economist, told PolitiFact that although the Center for Immigration Studies counted the use of public schools by immigrants in the US illegally as a cost, he and other economists see public school funding as having net positive benefits.
Trump repeats 'autopen' conspiracy theory about Biden
Trump said: 'We have a lot of bad criminals that came into the country. … It was an unforced error. It was an incompetent president that allowed it to happen. It was an autopen, maybe, that allowed it to happen.'
He was referring to a conspiracy theory in pro-Trump circles that Biden was so out of the loop during his own presidency that aides were able to repeatedly forge his signature with a mechanical autopen to pursue their own policy goals.
No evidence has surfaced to indicate that a document Biden signed – whether by autopen or not – was done without his knowledge or consent. Anything Biden signed using an autopen would have been valid, legal experts say.
In March, we rated Trump's claim that Biden's pardons weren't valid because they were signed with an autopen false. US presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, routinely have had subordinates sign pardons on their behalf.
Trump falsely says policy bill targets only Medicaid 'waste, fraud and abuse'
During his visit, reporters asked Trump about the One Big Beautiful Bill – which the Senate approved mid-visit – and its effect on Medicaid. 'Are you saying that the estimated 11.8 million people who could lose their health coverage, that is all waste, fraud and abuse?' a reporter asked.
Trump said: 'No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying it's going to be a very much smaller number than that, and that number will be waste, fraud and abuse.'
We rated a similar version of Trump's statement false, finding that the Medicaid changes go beyond just waste, fraud and abuse.
The 11.8 million figure comes from a CBO analysis of the Senate-passed bill.
Although some provisions could improve the detection of beneficiaries who aren't eligible for coverage, other provisions of the House and the Senate bills would change the healthcare programme for low-income Americans to align with Trump's ideology and Republican priorities.
The bill incentivises states to stop using their own funds to cover people in the US illegally; it requires people to work or do another approved activity to secure benefits; and it bans Medicaid payments for gender-affirming care and to nonprofits such as Planned Parenthood that provide abortions among other services.
Other changes would impose copays and a shorter window for retroactive coverage. These would change the programme's fiscal outlook but would not target waste, fraud or abuse.
Trump doubles estimate of immigrant arrivals under Biden
Trump said: 'In the four years before I took office, Joe Biden allowed 21 million people, … illegal aliens, to invade our country.'
This campaign talking point remains false. During Biden's tenure, immigration officials encountered immigrants illegally crossing the US border about 10 million times. When accounting for 'got-aways' – people who evade border officials – the number rises to about 11.6 million.
Encounters aren't the same as admissions. Encounters represent events, so one person who tries to cross the border twice counts as two encounters. Also, not everyone encountered is let into the country. The Homeland Security Department estimated about 4 million encounters under Biden led to expulsions or removals.
During Biden's administration, about 3.8 million people were released into the US to await immigration court hearings, Department of Homeland Security data show.
PolitiFact staff researcher Caryn Baird and staff writer Ella Moore contributed to this article.