Fact-Checking Biden’s First News Conference as President

cnn.com | 3/25/21

Would the following employees please report to the Human Resources department with their security badges? Daniel Dale, Holmes Lybrand, Tara Subramaniam, and Katie Lobosco.

Defending his approach to migration at the southern border, Biden claimed that “we’re sending back the vast majority of the families that are coming.”

Facts First: This was not true in February, the last month for which we have full data.

Biden claimed that there were five times as many motions to break the filibuster in 2020 than there were between 1917 and 1971.

“Between 1917 and 1971, the filibuster existed, there were a total of 58 motions to break a filibuster. That whole time. Last year alone there were five times that many,” Biden said.

Facts First: While experts on the filibuster say it is hard even for them to pinpoint the number per year, Biden’s figures are misleading. In 2020, the number of motions filed to end a Senate debate — a proxy measure for the use of the filibuster — was about double, not five times, the number from 1917 to 1971.

Addressing the recent influx of unaccompanied migrant children on the US southern border, Biden claimed that “nothing has changed” from the Trump administration — saying there had been a “28% increase in children on the border under my administration” versus a 31% increase in the same period of 2019 under Trump.

Facts First: Biden was wrong about the increase in children at the border during his own administration. He appeared to be mixing up two different statistics, one about children and one about migrants generally.

According to data from Customs and Border Protection, the number of unaccompanied children encountered on the border rose by 61% between January and February 2021, not the 28% Biden claimed. That is about double the increase between January and February 2019.

According to the Customs and Border Protection data, overall encounters with migrants on the border did increase 28% from January to February of this year. But Biden referred specifically to “children.”