At a rally in Delaware yesterday, Trump started off his speech strangely, with a written laundry list of problems that Delaware was facing. At the 1:04:30 gets to Syrian refugees, some of whom have been settled in Delaware.
“Delaware voters are concerned about the possible intake of Syrian refugees, is that not unbelievable? The state has seen large increases in its foreign born population. We don’t even know where the hell they come from. We don’t know where they come from, who they are, they’re totally undocumented, and you’ve seen a large intake. With the problems that we’ve had you’ve seen a large intake.” Trump continues, boasting about his prediction of the numbers. “Do you remember when they said they were gonna only take 3000? Then it was 6000. And I said it was going to be a lot more, I was saying 200,000. You know what, I’m right. Okay? We’re taking in tens of thousands of people, and you know what we all have heart. And we want to take care of that. But don’t know where these people are coming from, totally like they have no documents. Totally undocumented.”
Aside from being overtly xenophobia, stating the an “increase in the foreign born population” is a problem, the numbers that he quotes are wrong. Really wrong. It is difficult to find good, recent numbers on the actual number of Syrian refugee that have been resettled in the US. A document from the United Nationsstates as of February of 2016 the number of refugees that have been submitted is only 32,369. Those have not actually been settle here, they are still going through the interview process.
According to The Hill, only 1300 refugees have been settled in the US since September. In September 2015, President Obama stated a goal of settling 10,000 refugees by September of 2016, but shortages of interviewers has greatly slowed down that process.
In any case, Trump’s assertion that he was right about his prediction of 200,000 refugees is not correct.
Sources:
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51qasW8X4Fk
http://theconversation.com/where-have-4-8-million-syrian-refugees-gone-57968
What Donald Trump Lied About Yesterday 