After initially claiming the rumors of such a deal were false, the administration has since described this pledge as a means of providing "training" assistance to Afghan forces.
(This is false: The administration has implemented policies making it harder for people to get such protection, including disqualifying domestic violence victims from asylum, but it has not stopped granting asylum).
Sadly, both assertions are false and administrations that truly ignore public opinion are in more trouble than they know.
So much attention has been paid to these false determinants of administration policy that a different political dynamic has been underappreciated.
Trump's comments came a day after the spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement's San Francisco office, James Schwab, announced he was resigning because of what he said were false claims by administration officials about the purported security threat from immigrants in the country illegally.
After several delays and false starts, the administration reworked the executive order to create one that would pass muster in the courts ― although Stephen Miller, a senior White House adviser, conceded before it was unveiled that it would have the "same basic policy outcome".
But it also brought out the worst in Mexican Government - indecision, false pride and a discredited administration's attempt to play politics with national tragedy.
These misstatements go very well with the administration's false "weapons of mass destruction" rationale for invading Iraq; and with the president's equally false assurance that warrant requirements for domestic surveillance were being observed in the post-9/11 era, to name two salient examples.
He defended the administration's false contention that Trump's inauguration crowd was the biggest ever.
Perhaps he should turn his attention to the Bush administration's false claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or its ties to Al Qaeda.
