Immigration and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border are hot-button issues ahead of the 2024 presidential election, according to a new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
VERIFY reader Bill recently messaged our team about a video his neighbor emailed to him. In the video, a robotic-sounding voice reads a list of “10 facts about illegal immigration.” The video claims all of the “facts” were published in the Los Angeles Times.
“From the LA Times: 1. 40% of all workers in LA County, that’s 10.2 million people, are working for cash, and not paying taxes. This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants, working without a green card,” the voice in the video says in one part.
Bill wants to know if the Los Angeles Times actually published a list of all the facts stated in the video.
THE QUESTION
Did the Los Angeles Times publish a “10 facts about illegal immigration” list?
THE SOURCES
THE ANSWER
No, the Los Angeles Times did not publish a “10 facts about illegal immigration” list. The list stems from a falsely attributed viral chain message that’s been circulating online since at least 2006.
WHAT WE FOUND
The Los Angeles Times never published a “10 facts about illegal immigration” list.
VERIFY found that the “facts” the robotic-sounding voice reads in the video Bill sent us actually come from a viral chain message that’s been circulating false information online since at least 2006; and it’s still being shared in 2024.
The chain message typically includes iterations of the following text:
“Interesting that the LA Times did this. All the others are staying away from it. Whether you are a Democrat or Republican, this should be of great interest to you! Just One State - be sure and read the last part... try for 3 times. This is only one State... If this doesn't open your eyes, nothing will!
From the L.A. Times:
1. 40% of all workers in LA County (10.2 million people) are working for cash; and not paying taxes. This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants, working without a green card. (Donald Trump was right)
2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.
3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.
4. Over 2/3 of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal, whose births were paid for by taxpayers.
5. Nearly 35% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals; they are here illegally.
6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.
7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.
8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.
9. 21 radio stations in LA are Spanish-speaking.
10. In LA County, 5.1 million people speak English; 3.9 million, speak Spanish. (There are 10.2 million people in LA County.)
(All 10 of the above facts were published in the Los Angeles Times)
Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops, but 29% are on welfare. Over 70% of the United States' annual population growth, (and over 90% of California, Florida, and New York), results from immigration. Also, 29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens.
We are fools for letting this continue.”
But this never appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
“This list, which is being forwarded around the world at lightning speed, is a hoax,” the Los Angeles Times Opinion website said in May 2006.
The Los Angeles Times told readers again in 2007 that the newspaper “never ran such a story.”
“No article has appeared in The Times with this list. And some of these ‘facts’ appear to have been misleadingly edited from articles that appeared in the L.A. Times as long as 20 years ago and are now being cited inappropriately,” the Los Angeles Times readers’ representative office wrote then.
After the list first circulated online, the Los Angeles Times opinion website combed through the newspapers’ archives to look into the claims. Click here to read more about their findings.
Take this claim, for example: “75% of people on the Most Wanted List in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.”
The Los Angeles Times Opinion wrote, “We can’t locate such a fact anywhere. The Los Angeles Police Department’s most wanted list contains a number of people with unknown or obscured identities, suggesting that tallying the legal status of everyone on the list would be very difficult if not impossible. Ditto for the FBI’s most-wanted list.”
VERIFY was also unable to determine where this claim originated. We took a look at the LAPD’s current most wanted list and found it still does not contain the legal status of the suspects.
Another example is the claim that the Los Angeles Times reported that “over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.”
“This appears to misquote information from a May 24, 1987, article about the number of people living in garages in Los Angeles County,” the Los Angeles Times wrote.
“It reported that, at that time, about 42,000 garages were sheltering about 200,000 immigrants in L.A. County. That article provided detailed information explaining how the figures were arrived at but it did not allude to anyone’s residency status,” the newspaper added.
VERIFY confirmed via the Los Angeles Times archives that the May 24, 1987 article did say: “A systematic survey by The Times indicates that about 42,000 garages are sheltering about 200,000 people in Los Angeles County.”
However, the article did not include any information about the immigrants’ legal or residency status in the U.S. It’s also unclear where the 300,000 figure in the list stems from.
The Los Angeles Times and fact-checking websites, including Snopes and PolitiFact, have debunked the list multiple times since it first appeared online in 2006.
VERIFY reached out to the Los Angeles Times for comment but did not hear back by the time of publication.
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