Freshman Rep. Duncan Hunter: There Is More Violence In Tijuana Than In ‘Iraq And Afghanistan’

Freshman Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-CA), son of former GOP presidential candidate Duncan Hunter, recently was elected to Congress after campaigning on a staunch anti-immigration platform.

During an interview with MSNBC’s Luke Russert today, Hunter defended his campaign pledge to end citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, arguing immigration increases domestic crime. As his evidence, Hunter made the outlandish and grossly inaccurate claim that Tijuana, Mexico has more crime than “Iraq and Afghanistan”:

HUNTER: In San Diego, we face a lot of crime. There’s been more murders in Tijuana, Mexico than there have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s more dangerous to go to Mexico from San Diego than it is to fly over or stroll around in a Baghdad market.

Continuing his tirade against immigration, Hunter claimed undocumented immigration “drives wages down, hurts hospitals, hurts education here in San Diego, and it’s doing this throughout the entire country.” Watch it:

Hunter is unfortunately correct that violence in Mexico has ballooned in recent years, in part due to the ongoing drug wars. At least 4,000 have died this year in drug-related violence, according to the AP. Tijuana has also seen a surge in violence.

But to claim that there are more murders in the city of Tijuana than there are in “Iraq and Afghanistan” is absurd. In Tijuana, “at least 200 people have been killed in drug violence this year,” the Washington Post reported in June. But in the month of July 2008 alone, there were approximately 500 civilian fatalities in Iraq. There have been roughly 700 deaths this year in Afghanistan.

Hunter also claimed that strolling around in Baghdad is less “dangerous” than in Tijuana — the same week that Baghdad witnessed a devastating suicide attack, a rocket fired into the Green Zone, and a bomb attack on an NPR journalist’s car. Think Progress