Here’s the Chart on Illegal Immigration That Trump Was Talking About When Shot

Here’s the Chart on Illegal Immigration That Trump Was Talking About When Shot: The BorderLine

Everyone my parents’ age remembers where they were when President John F. Kennedy was shot. Their parents remember where they were when imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Last Saturday, July 13, shortly after 6 p.m., I was sitting by the pool reading the news on my phone. I bet you remember where you were, too.

In an instant, we saw the attempted assassination of a former and perhaps future American president.

Donald Trump came within half an inch of being the fifth president to be felled by an assassin’s bullet; he is now one of several more who were wounded in an assassination attempt.

Trump’s reaction under fire at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the photographs taken in the shooting’s immediate aftermath, already are iconic reminders of an awful day.

The instant coverage from much of the news media seemed to minimize the gravity and tragedy of the situation. A CNN headline—“Secret Service Rushes Trump Off Stage After He Falls at Rally”—is one example.

The nadir of “Republicans pounce”-style journalism was this headline from Newsweek: “MAGA responds with outrage after Donald Trump injured at Pennsylvania rally.” That headline didn’t last long but was captured by an X user.

There will be plenty of time to investigate how one deranged, 20-year-old man was able to get this close to changing U.S. history and still managed to murder a 50-year-old husband and father as he heroically protected his family in the stands. The shooter also wounded two others in the crowd.

After such an awful event, and with so many questions to answer, not a lot of people focused on what Trump was saying at the time. He was talking about the problem of mass illegal immigration.

As the nearly fatal shot rang out, Trump had just turned to point at a large chart that was immediately familiar to those of us who write about border security issues.

Many like it exist, but that particular chart was produced by the office of Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who has used it in multiple congressional hearings to illustrate the unprecedented scale of the man-made problem at the U.S. borders.

Here is the same chart, from the website for Johnson’s Senate office:

The chart on illegal immigration, with its distinct orange and blue colors, shows the peaks and troughs of Border Patrol encounters with illegal aliens at the southwest border from 2012 to 2024.

Bold text on the chart points out key presidential policy decisions and what happened in response.

In 2012, when President Barack Obama announced a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to prevent deportation of children brought here by illegal immigrants, there were about 40,000 encounters a month with illegal aliens at the southwest border. But Border Patrol encounters with illegal aliens hit around 70,000 a month by mid-2014, at which time Obama declared a “humanitarian crisis.” —>READ MORE HERE

Source