Don't worry, be happy, about a caravan of 14,000 people marching toward our southern border. Nothing to fret about.
That was Joe Scarborough's line on today's Morning Joe. Trying to shrug off the threat, Scarborough sniffed that the caravan "doesn't really affect" the people concerned about it, and then claimed:
"That April caravan, where Trump and Fox News said thousands and thousands of people were invading. It ended up like 11 people and a hound dog."
Mika Brzezinski did her bit, portraying the caravan as representing "a human tragedy of biblical proportions."
Scarborough & co. spent much of the show's opening segment castigating President Trump for his alleged "lies." So what about Scarborough's claim that in April, only 11 caravan members made it to the US border?
According to this article in the left-leaning USA Today [emphasis added throughout]:
"401 members of that caravan requested asylum at ports of entry, a legal right enshrined in U.S. law and international conventions the U.S. is party to. Federal officials interviewed those asylum-seekers and found 374 of them, or 93 percent, passed the first test on the path toward asylum, where they must demonstrate that they have a 'credible fear' of returning to their home country."
And as per an immigration official quoted in the article:
“The extremely low bar for establishing credible fear is ripe for fraud and abuse. In other words, a 'credible fear' referral doesn’t equal asylum status, but it does earn a free ticket into the U.S., allowing individuals to disappear into the interior to live and work illegally.”
If Scarborough can back up his "11 people and a hound dog" claim, let him produce his evidence.
