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Drew Angerer/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Here’s ABC News’ fact check of the second of two Democratic presidential debates in Miami between former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Kamala Harris, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Michael Bennet, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, former Gov. John Hickenlooper, Rep. Eric Swalwell, author Marianne Williamson and entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

FACT CHECK: Harris’ immigration record as California AG

Harris: “They should not be deported. And I — actually — this was one of the very few issues with which I disagreed with the [Obama] administration with whom I always had a great relationship with and a great deal of respect … and on this issue, I disagreed with my president. Because policy was to allow deportation of people who by ICE’s own definition were non-criminals. So as attorney general and the chief law officer of the state of California, I issued a directive to the sheriffs of my state that they did not have to comply with detainers and instead should make decisions based on the best interest of public safety of their community.”

In announcing her support for reversing U.S. policy and decriminalizing the act of illegally crossing the southern border, Harris provided the example of her past opposition to the Obama administration’s ‘Secure Communities’ program while she was California’s Attorney General.

Harris did indeed make headlines in December 2012 when she told local law enforcement across the state that they could choose whether or not to comply with federal detainer requests for undocumented immigrants.

However, Harris also was criticized at the time by some immigrant rights groups for not going further and issuing a statewide rule on the issue. Harris was also reported at the time to have opposed a bill that would have “forbidden police departments to honor federal detainer requests except in cases in which defendants had been convicted of a serious or violent crime.”

FACT CHECK: Buttigieg: Americans pay $800 more each year due to Trump tariffs

Buttigieg: “Tariffs are taxes and Americans pay $800 more a year because of the tariffs. Meanwhile, China is investing so they could soon be able to run circles around us in artificial intelligence.”

Economists believe that tariffs on imported goods are indeed taxes, that either business or consumers end up paying. Most economists also say the costs associated with tariffs are eventually passed on to consumers. Businesses do this by raising the cost of the impacted good, which means consumers pay more in the end.

Buttigieg is likely citing a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York which says that increased U.S. tariffs would cost Americans roughly $831 a year, a claim he’s repeated to ABC’s “This Week” Co-Anchor Martha Raddatz in a May interview.

FACT CHECK: Gillibrand claims seven children have died in custody during the Trump administration

Sen. Gillibrand: “One of the worst things about President Trump, what he has done to the country is torn apart the moral fabric of who we are. When we started separating children at the border from their parents, the fact that seven children have died in his custody, the fact that dozens of children have been separated from their parents and have no plan to reunite them, I would do a few things.”

It is correct that seven children have died after having been recently in U.S. custody. Most of them died after experiencing flu-like symptoms and being held at centers that immigration advocates have said were too crowded. One of those children, however, died from a congenital heart defect and her death was not tied to her care.

Mariee Juárez died last year after having spent time in ICE custody, but had been released.
A 10-year-old died last fall after being in HHS custody, but due to a severe congenital heart defect.
16-year-old migrant boy dies after being in US custody for a week.
A 2-year-old died in May after being diagnosed with pneumonia.
Another 16-year-old died in April after experiencing symptoms resembling the flu.
Last December, a 7-year-old girl, Jakelin Caal Maquin, and 8-year-old boy, Felipe Gomez Alonzo, both died of bacterial complications in separate incidents.

FACT CHECK: Sanders on the U.S. paying highest prices in the world for prescription drugs

Sanders: “The function of the health care system today is to make billions in profits for the insurance companies and last year — if you can believe it — while we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs and I will lower prices in half in this country top 10 companies made $69 billion in profit.”

Sanders said on Thursday night that the United States pays the “highest prices in the world for prescription drugs,” which is generally true. When Health and Human Services looked at the costs of drugs mostly covered by Medicare, HHS Secretary Alex Azar said the agency found that Medicare paid the highest price for 19 out of 27 drugs compared to other developed countries, ABC News previously reported.

Additionally, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that in 2016, “the United States spent nearly twice as much as 10 high-income countries on medical care and performed less well on many population health outcomes.”

Why is this? ABC News previously reported that drug companies say individuals in the United States generally get access to these drugs first and the money goes to research that often benefit American consumers.

FACT CHECK: Buttigieg on support for pathway to legal immigration

Buttigieg: “The American people want a pathway to citizenship, they want protections for Dreamers.”

Buttigieg is correct that a majority of Americans want to find a way for the 10.5 undocumented immigrants already living and working in the U.S. to become legal.

A 2019 Gallup poll found that 81% support a path to citizenship for immigrants in the U.S. illegally. A separate 2015 Associated Press-GfK poll, found the majority of Americans — 54% — support a way for immigrants who are already in the country illegally to become citizens. That poll says 44% are opposed.

In a 2017 poll by AP and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, just 1 in 5 Americans said they wanted to deport young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children and are in the country illegally. Those young immigrants are often referred to as “Dreamers.”

FACT CHECK: Yang on automation taking away jobs

Yang: “This is the move that we have to make, particularly as technology is now automating away millions of American jobs, it’s why Donald Trump is our president today. That we automated away four million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and we are about to do the same to millions of retail jobs, call center jobs, fast food, truck driver jobs and on and on through the economy.”

Yang’s platform line on automating jobs has merit.

From 2000 to 2010, the U.S. lost 5.6 million manufacturing jobs, according to a study by the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, as cited by the Financial Times in 2016. Of that 5.6 million, 85% — 4.76 million — were lost due to technological trade, including largely automation.

A 2019 Brookings Institution study said that Midwestern states would be hardest hit by automation, and a 2017 Brookings study found that industrial robots are highly populated around the Midwestern states, which could correlate with a loss of manufacturing jobs.

In his campaign speeches, Yang has referenced reports from MIT, McKinsey & Company and Bain & Company about the future of manufacturing jobs. An Oxford Economics report released this week claimed that 20 million manufacturing jobs would be displaced by machines by 2030 worldwide. A 2017 McKinsey study found that 75 million to 375 million people worldwide may need to change jobs and get new skills by 2030.

However, while studies show jobs will be lost do automation, they also point towards job growth. A 2018 World Economic Forum report found that while 75 million jobs may be lost in the shift to automation, 133 million more jobs may emerge.

Sanders: “Well, President Trump, you are not standing up for working families when you try to throw 32 million people off their health care that they have and that 83% of your tax benefits go to the top 1%.”

Analysis from the left-leaning Tax Policy Center found that the top 1% of Americans would receive 82.8% of President Donald Trump’s tax benefits. The study also finds that under the first few years of the bill, benefits of the law are still aimed towards upper-middle and upper class Americans.

All income groups under the tax plan immediately see some sort of tax cut, but the biggest cuts are reserved for the ultra-wealthy. More than half of American households, however, would eventually see a tax increase, according to the report by 2027.

FACT CHECK: Sanders on wealthiest three Americans vs the bottom 50% of Americans

Sanders: “We have a new vision for America and at a time when we have three people in this country owning more wealth than the bottom half of America, while 500,000 people are sleeping out on the streets today, we think it is time for change, real change.”

Sanders is likely citing a 2018 Forbes estimate of the three wealthiest individuals in the U.S. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett had a combined net worth of $330 billion. According to Forbes, Bezos and his family have approximately $160 billion, Gates has $97 billion and Buffett had an estimated net worth of $88.3 billion.

The 2016 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances estimated that the bottom 50% of Americans held a combined net worth of $245 billion.

A 2015 study from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban development reported 500,000 people were homeless during the year 2015.

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