WATCH: Vance Fact Checks the Fact Checkers on Immigration

‘Thank you, senator, for describing the legal process,’ CBS moderator Margaret Brennan replied to Vance during VP debate

Sen. J.D. Vance fact checked CBS News debate moderator Margaret Brennan after she tried to fact check him about the legal status of migrants in Springfield, Ohio, during a heated moment from Tuesday’s vice presidential debate. Brennan’s intervention ran contrary to the network’s stated position prior to the debate that moderators would refrain from fact checking the candidates.

“Just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio, does have a large number of migrants who have legal status,” Brennan stated.

Brennan initially tried to prevent Vance from responding but he pointed out that “the rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact check … so I think it’s important to say what’s going on.”

“There’s an application called the CBPOne app where you can go on as an illegal migrant and apply for asylum or apply for parole and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand,” Vance said. “That is not a person coming in and applying for a green card and waiting for 10 years, that’s the facilitation of illegal immigration, Margaret, by our own leadership.”

“Thank you, senator, for describing the legal process,” Brennan replied.

The dispute was over the question of two distinct immigration programs: CBP One and Temporary Protected Status. The former is a phone app developed by the Biden-Harris administration in order to alleviate strain on resources on the southern border and allows migrants to remotely apply for asylum from a foreign country.

Temporary Protected Status is a legal mechanism in which the president may protect illegal immigrants from deportation for a brief period of time. Such power is only meant to be used if an illegal immigrant’s home country is facing an “ongoing armed conflict,” “environmental disaster,” and “other extraordinary and temporary conditions,” but has been used to protect roughly 1.2 million illegal aliens from deportation since January 2021.

Many of the Haitian migrants who now have Temporary Protected Status initially entered the United States illegally or through the CBPOne app. Migrants with Temporary Protected Status are provided work permits and can apply for welfare benefits.

Walz chimed in at the end of the exchange that the programs Vance referred to have “been on the books since 1990.” CBPOne was created in October 2020 and dramatically expanded under the Biden-Harris administration.