Mark Small

As a furloughed scientist, I thought it worthwhile to use my PhD skills to look at evidence for the president’s claims of a national security crisis & whether his desire for a wall is an adequate justification for a government #shutdown that has cut off pay for 800,000 Americans.

What every American should be asking themselves right now is this: what is the evidence that our border is so unsafe that it constitutes a crisis and the need to #BuildTheWall? Evidence that would be needed to support such a claim are that...

(A) there has been a dramatic increase in people crossing our border over time, (B) there is an increase in crime with an increase in immigration, and immigrants commit more crimes than those within our borders, and/or (C) current strategies for border security are ineffective.

So what do the data show?