'I use many stats.' Trump spars with reporter over why he declared a national emergency at the border

WASHINGTON – Pressed to explain his decision to declare a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border to help build his controversial wall, President Donald Trump said Friday he relies on "many stats" from "a lot of sources" to inform his opinions.

Trump did not specify which statistics guided his decision.

Critics have noted that border crossings are down significantly from a decade ago and that most illegal drugs coming through the border arrive through ports of entry.

How both sides frame the situation at the border will play a central role in the legal battles that will follow Trump's national emergency declaration. Democrats have accused Trump of manufacturing the crisis to build political support for the wall.

Apprehensions along the southern border are actually at historic lows. Border Patrol routinely apprehended more than 1 million people a year – peaking at 1.6 million in 2000 – throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. In 2017, it apprehended just over 300,000. It 2018, it apprehended just under 400,000.

“I get my numbers from a lot of sources, like Homeland Security, primarily," Trump said during one of the more heated exchanges of a press conference Friday in the White House Rose Garden. "The numbers that come out of Homeland Security for the cost that we spend and the money that we lose because of illegal immigration."

But it’s not clear whether DHS has ever produced such an analysis, which focuses on immigration enforcement and processing visas for people entering the country. The department did not immediately return a question about economic reports.

Trump has spent much of his presidency describing the situation on the border as a "national crisis" and calling caravans of migrants arriving from Central America an "invasion." Last year he deployed thousands of active and National Guard soldiers to the border to place razor wire along sections of wall that already exist.

Many of the migrants arriving in the caravans are applying for asylum, a legal form of immigration. Some have sought to slip across the border illegally.

Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show the vast majority of drugs seized along the southern border are caught by Customs officers at ports of entry, not by Border Patrol agents who monitor the vast stretches between those ports. According to CBP statistics, 90 percent of heroin seized along the border, 88 percent of cocaine, 87 percent of methamphetamine, and 80 percent of fentanyl in the first 11 months of the 2018 fiscal year was caught trying to be smuggled in at legal crossing points.

A reporter pressed Trump on whether the statistics published by his own agencies are wrong.

"No. No. I use many stats," Trump said. "You have stats that are far worse than the ones I use but I use many stats. But I also use Homeland Security."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'I use many stats.' Trump spars with reporter over why he declared a national emergency at the border