In his State of the Union address on February 24, 2026, President Donald Trump spent a great deal of time on immigration and the border, describing his first year back in office as a sharp break from what came before. As an immigration attorney who has been practicing for decades, much of it dealing with cases that start at the southern border, I pay close attention when presidents talk about this subject. The areas he highlighted—border enforcement, asylum processing, alleged fraud in refugee programs, and public safety—are not abstractions to me; they shape my clients’ lives and the day-to-day reality of the system I work in.

What follows is a point‑by‑point look at the major immigration claims in the speech, with context drawn from official data and available public records.

The Claim of a Historic Surge Reversed

The president said: “After four years in which millions and millions of illegal aliens poured across our borders totally unfettered and unchecked, we now have the strongest and most secure border in American history, by far.”

It is true that the Biden administration presided over record‑high numbers at the southwest border. Fiscal year 2023 saw more than 2.4 million encounters there, and from early 2021 through late 2024, monthly averages hovered around 155,000. A substantial share of arrivals came through channels like CBP One appointments or humanitarian parole, which included preliminary screening but ultimately funneled very large numbers of people into the interior with Notices to Appear and ICE check‑in dates set years out—sometimes into the early 2030s—because the immigration courts were already overwhelmed. In a Fox News interview about one Colombian asylum case, I described this dynamic as a kind of “backdoor amnesty”: people were allowed to remain in the United States for extended periods while their cases sat in line.

The Biden administration’s expansive use of parole under INA § 212(d)(5)(A), paired with routine issuance of NTAs, drew heavy criticism for moving around, rather than through, the statute. INA § 235(b)(1) requires detention for individuals subject to expedited removal who express fear and seek asylum, at least until the credible‑fear screening is completed and, if there is no credible fear, until removal. Even when credible fear is found, the statute presumes detention pending further proceedings unless parole is granted on a case by case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit. Roughly 2.8 million immigrants were paroled in, on a scale that went well beyond what Congress had in mind and effectively sidestepped expedited removal and mandatory detention as the immigration law written by Congress requires.

Under the Trump administration, southwest border encounters have dropped sharply—to 237,538 total in fiscal year 2025 (the lowest level in more than half a century, according to Pew’s analysis of CBP data) and just 6,073 apprehensions in January 2026, which is about a 93 percent decline from the long‑term monthly average of 83,065 between fiscal years 1992 and 2024. Those numbers support the claim that enforcement has tightened considerably. Whether that translates into the “strongest border in American history” depends on what one chooses to measure—personnel, infrastructure, technology, or specific outcomes—but the statistics speak for themselves.

The Claim of Zero Illegal Admissions in Recent Months

The president stated: “In the past nine months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted to the United States. But we will always allow people to come in legally, people that will love our country and will work hard to maintain our country.”

DHS and Border Patrol figures do show that for nine straight months through February 2026, apprehended migrants have not been released into the U.S. interior in the way they were under the prior administration. People encountered at the border are being detained, expelled under applicable authority, or removed. That is a meaningful policy shift from the earlier “catch‑and‑release” practices that fed directly into the immigration court backlog. At the same time, if you widen the lens to include ports of entry, nationwide encounters in January 2026 totaled 34,631, so “zero” is not literally accurate. Legal channels—family‑based and employment‑based visas, other immigrant and nonimmigrant categories, and asylum for those who qualify—continue to function alongside these enforcement changes.

The Claim About Migrants from Prisons and Mental Institutions

The president asserted that migrants “poured in by the millions and millions from prisons, from mental institutions. There were murderers, 11,888 murders. They came into our country.”

There is no federal data set that supports the notion of a deliberate mass release from foreign prisons or mental institutions directed toward the U.S. border. Some migrants do have criminal histories, but study after study—including work by the American Immigration Council and peer‑reviewed research—shows that both documented and undocumented immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native‑born Americans. Recent DHS data also indicate that roughly 74 percent of people in immigration detention have no criminal convictions at all. As for the specific claim of “11,888 murders,” my research did not produce any verified statistic that ties that figure to recent border crossers.

Fraud in the Somali Community

On the subject of fraud, the president said: “When it comes to the corruption that is plundering — really, it’s plundering America — there’s been no more stunning example than Minnesota, where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer.”

The Department of Justice has, in fact, brought several high‑profile fraud cases in Minnesota involving Somali‑American defendants. The most widely reported case, in 2022, charged 47 individuals with stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a nonprofit feeding program during the COVID‑19 era, and there have been other cases involving misuse of child‑welfare and social‑service funds. Those prosecutions highlight real oversight and compliance failures. They do not, however, describe the conduct of the Somali‑American community at large.

Concerns about fraud that has not been talked about surface in the refugee‑resettlement context. In 2008, under President Bush, the State Department ran a DNA pilot program for the Priority Three (P‑3) family‑reunification category, which covered a large number of Somali, Ethiopian, and Liberian applicants. The pilot found that only about 20 percent of the relationships claimed in that pool could be confirmed by DNA, implying fraud rates as high as 80 percent in some groups, often involving invented family ties or “ghost children.” The P‑3 program was suspended later that year. In 2009, under President Obama, officials examined whether to expand DNA requirements in response to these findings.

Between 2003 and 2008, more than 36,000 people entered the United States under P‑3, about 95 percent of them from Africa, with Somalis making up a large share. If one applies the pilot’s fraud rates to that entire cohort, it suggests that tens of thousands of people—some estimates run to roughly 28,800—may have gained admission on the basis of misrepresented family relationships.

Immigration law treats that kind of conduct seriously. Willful misrepresentation of a material fact can render someone inadmissible under INA § 212(a)(6)(C)(i) and deportable under INA § 237(a)(1)(A). Refugee or asylee status obtained by fraud can be terminated, and a later naturalization application that hides the fraud can support denaturalization under INA § 340(a) for procuring citizenship through concealment or willful misrepresentation. On the criminal side, false statements to federal officials may lead to charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (up to five years in prison), and unlawfully procuring citizenship is chargeable under 18 U.S.C. § 1425 (with penalties up to ten years where other offenses are involved).

The Claim Involving a Specific Murder

The president cited the killing of Iryna Zarutska, saying she “had escaped a brutal war only to be slain by a hardened criminal set free to kill in America — came in through open borders.”

Court records and local news reports identify the defendant, DeCarlos Brown Jr., as a U.S.‑born citizen from Charlotte, North Carolina, with a long‑standing history of mental‑health issues and prior state prison terms. The crime took place on August 22, 2025. There is no indication that it was tied to recent immigration or border‑release policies. It appears to be a tragic failure of the criminal‑justice and mental‑health systems, not an example of an “open border” homicide.

Where This Leaves the Policy Debate

The president’s speech underscores his emphasis on enforcement and deterrence, and the steep fall in unauthorized crossings is reflected in CBP statistics. At the same time, the asylum system remains clogged with backlogs and short on resources, and that reality does not change simply because fewer people are arriving at the border in a given month. If we are serious about fixing the system, we have to attend to both security and the timely, fair adjudication of legitimate claims.

Monthly CBP updates and DHS data are still the most reliable way to see what is actually happening at the border in real time. Looking a bit further out, our immigration law badly needs a modern guest‑worker framework that can supply labor to industries that the Department of Labor certifies as facing genuine shortages. Done properly, such a program would allow U.S. employers to hire the foreign workers they need without displacing American citizens. Democrats have generally resisted this approach, including former President Obama and Senator Bernie Sanders, who have warned that expanding guest‑worker visas could depress wages and encourage exploitation. The evidence, however, shows that well‑regulated programs can fill critical gaps without undercutting U.S. labor markets, and ignoring that reality only invites more of the same crises we keep reliving.