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  • 2018-06-20 (xsd:date)
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  • Did This Video Show Obama Agreeing with the Trump Administration on Immigration Policies? (en)
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  • In June 2018, the Trump administration received heavy criticized for enacting a short-lived policy to separate children from their families at the border of the United States and Mexico, sending them to detention centers across the country as an apparent attempt to deter asylum-seekers. As outrage over the issue continued, so did the disinformation. On 19 June, a video purportedly showing former United States President Barack Obama agreeing with Trump's immigration policies was posted to Twitter by political analyst Oliver McGee: This footage is disingenuous at best. It is true that Obama, like Trump, wished to take action against people entering the country without documentation, and argued that he had the authority as president to take certain legal actions. In terms of separating families at the border, however, there is nothing in this clip to suggest that Obama agreed with the current policy — and as a matter of fact, Obama's full speech contains a number of passages that directly contradict this particular claim or inference. The footage compiles several moments from a speech Obama delivered in 2014 about immigration reform and his Immigration Accountability Executive Action plan. Although he did genuinely say the words used in this clip, the quotes are out of order and out of context. The relevant portions of the speech can be found below. The words in bold are the passages included in the video. The full speech can be read in its entirety here: Interestingly, the heavily edited video did not include passages from the same speech in which Obama specifically spoke out against the practice of separating families. Near the end of the speech, he rhetorically asked if the United States was a nation that would tolerate taking children away from families: A few sentences later Obama adds: Obama also emphasized in this speech that his immigration policy targeted felons, not families and criminals, not children: President Obama's Immigration Accountability Executive Action plan tackled a wide range of immigration issues, not just those concerning the border. The three main points of his plan involved cracking down on unauthorized immigration at the border, deporting undocumented felons, providing undocumented immigrants already in the United States a chance to avoid deportation by passing background checks and paying taxes. The felons, not families portion of the plan even included a provision to reduce family separations: The viral video attempted to make it seem as if Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump were in lockstep with one another when it came to immigration issues such as the separation of families at the border by dishonestly cherry-picking out-of-context quotes and omitting passages that disagreed with the chosen narrative. However, Obama repeatedly said in this speech — as well as in the Immigration Accountability Executive Action plan — that he was opposed to family separation. (en)
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