Millions of people who “entered the US” and then immediately left again are included in Fox News ‘ big scary number ( 2/20/24 ) of the big scary number.
7.3 million.
This is the staggering amount of allegedly illegal entry points into the US from the southern border that has been discussed in general conversation. Elon Musk propagated the data on X, previously Online, in a February 21 article that was viewed 37 million days.
The New York Post ( 2/27/24 ) quoted it in support of Musk’s conspiratorial claims that Democrats purposefully admit undocumented immigrants to win votes. Newsweek ( 2/27/24 ) pointed to it to castigate the Biden administration’s purported failure to address border issues, and it appeared in a House Republican press release ( 2/22/24 ) denouncing” Biden’s far- left open border policies”.
The number comes from a Fox News article ( 2/20/24 ) written by Chris Pandolfo, which posits that “nearly 7.3 million” migrants have illegally entered the country over the course of the Biden administration.
On its experience, the level of interest this has received makes feeling, as it’s a large number. In fact, it would be more than two-thirds of the 10.5 million undocumented immigrants estimated to be residing in the United States in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available ( Pew Research Center, 11/16/23 ).
But how was this variety calculated, and what does it really mean? The comments reveal how Fox created a fear-mongering narrative that deviates from what is really happening at the southwestern border.
Serious narrative ,
Elon Musk ( X, 2/21/24 ) hopes” the government is waking up” to the bogus claim that the Biden administration is “importing” 7 million migrants—and the absurd implication that any non- member may vote in any country’s elections.
Throughout his post, Pandolfo paints a picture of severity, stressing the fact that 7.3 million is bigger than the people of most US says:
That is larger than the people of 36 US states, including Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
He also envisions all these workers gathered around as their own area at a later time.
If a town were formed to form the unlawful refugees who had poured into the country under President Biden, it would be the second-largest city in America after New York. And the total does not include an estimated further 1.8 million known “gotaways” who evaded law enforcement, which may make it bigger than New York.
The use of the logo “illegal” and the image of these migrants convergent in the United States suggests that these 7.3 million have entered without authorization and had stayed in the US, feeding straight into the right-wing Great Replacement conspiracy theory. However, Musk’s quote post shared this remark on the Fox post:” This is actually insane and it’s by style. Since the country imports but some illegals, it’s enough to replace traditional voters in numerous swing states.
However, a careful reader might notice the distinction briefly made between “gotaways “—the estimated number of migrants who evaded the border patrol to successfully enter the US without authorization—and the initial 7.3 million. If “gotaways” are those who were n’t intercepted at the border, what exactly does that make the rest of them?
Misleading calculation ,
Pandolfo explains in his post that the figures Fox used to perform their study were derived from the federal government’s reports on border encounters:
That number comes from US Customs and Border Protection, which has already reported 961, 537 border fights in the current fiscal year, which runs from October through September. If the current rate of illegal immigration does not slow down, governmental time 2024 will break last year’s record of 2, 475, 669 south border encounters—a range that by itself exceeds the population of New Mexico, a border state.
But this is really false: Consular “encounters” are not a score of how many people were able to enter the country without approval, it’s a matter of how many times folks were stopped at the border by CBP providers. Many of these folks had every right to enter, and a sizable portion of them were denied entry. Some of them were stopped more than once, leading to numerous counts being counted.
However, of Fox‘s 7.3 million overall, almost 2.5 million were released into the land, the rest were turned up or placed in detention centres. The majority of those 2.5 million were people, and not all of them may remain there for a long time. These are just the workers who will have the option to have their cases heard.
Border patrol types
Title 42, a policy that denied refugees the right to seek asylum based on a national health emergency, was in effect until 2023 ( NPR, 5/11/23 ).
The CBP calculates its border encounter number by adding together three categories: Title 8 apprehensions, Title 8 inadmissibles, and—through May 2023—Title 42 expulsions ( NPR, 5/11/23 ).
People who enter a port of entry without a visa, without a visa, without a visa, without a visa, or without an entry clearance, or who attempt to enter officially but are detained by border agents for a variety of reasons, including prior immigration breaches, legal history, lack of immunity, etc.
People who are detained by border patrol agents after crossing the border without license are referred to as “title 8 arrests.” Cumulatively, Title 8 encounters made up roughly 4.8 million of Fox‘s 7.3 million range.
Some migrants seek humanitarian assistance in both of these groups. In a calculation of “illegal” bridges, including refugees who have a lawful right to seek asylum at a port of entry, is no news but advertising.
Migrants who fall under the Title 8 encounter category have the option of asking for a court hearing to have their fate decided by an immigration prosecutor, which will sometimes result in them being detained or given restricted release while their hearing is pending. It’s almost impossible to predict how many people will inevitably be permitted to stay for the long term because cases can take years to fix.
Finally, Title 42 expulsions—derived from a 1944 public health law that allows curbs on migration in the interest of public health ( AP, 5/12/23 ) —refers to migrants who were turned away during the Covid pandemic without being allowed to file for asylum. President Donald Trump instituted the policy in March 2020, and it continued to do so well into the Biden administration ( FAIR ). org, 4/22/22 ). In April 2023, Biden declared an end to the Covid emergency ( NPR, 4/11/23 ), which led to the end of Title 42-based border restrictions the following month. The remaining 2.5 million CBP contacts during the Biden administration were made up of these evictions.
Because these evictions did not, unlike arrests, come with legal repercussions for parole, Title 42 produced a great many follow efforts at crossing the border, inflating the tallies. For instance, in the first nine months of the 2022 fiscal year, almost a quarter of the 1.7 million encounters reported by CBP were individuals who had already been stopped ( Cronkite News, 7/18/22 ).
Migrants ‘ real situations
Factcheck. According to a report from a poll conducted by .org ( 2/27/24 ), Republicans “misleadingly suggested the number released into the country is much higher” than 2.5 million.
A detailed analysis of the standing of border crossings is challenging because tallies are continually changing, numerical breakdowns are inaccurate, and court cases leave some migrants in limbo where the outcomes are still disappointingly uncertain.
However, the Department of Homeland Security ( DHS) does provide some figures from February 2021 through October 2023 ( the most recent month with available data on releases ) that ( FactCheck ) provide a more detailed picture of the situation of unauthorized immigrants. org, 2/27/24 ).
2.5 million of these workers were truly released into the US, according to that data, which measures a period of roughly 6.5 million border contacts. To prevent placing children for extended periods of time in crowded detention facilities with people, the majority of these pertain to households.
These individuals are also chosen taking flight risk and their likelihood of posing a threat to the neighborhood, with the expectation that they will appear at later immigration court hearings ( 1/6/24 ) ( Washington Post, 6/ 6 ). The majority of released migrants show up for their hearings ( Politifacts, 5/17/22 ).
On 2.8 million of the people who participated in the fights were stopped at the border and turned aside over the same time, which is exactly what Fox‘s racist market believes should be done with illicit immigrants. When excluding all DHS repatriations, this amount rises to 3.7 million, with the proviso that some people who crossed the border before February 2021 may be included in this figure.
Misdirected conversation ,
Under Biden, there were more attempts to cross the border, and more migrants who crossed the border turned their heads ( Washington Post, 2/11/24 ).
Pandolfo’s monitoring serves only to catastrophize the border situation in order to fit into a tale of, at best, weak protection under the Biden administration, and, at worst, the Great Replacement plot concept. Despite the fact that more people have been expelled under Trump than under Biden, in part because of the higher number of encounters ( 2/11/24 ), ( Washington Post, 2/11/24 ).
There is also a demonization of these undocumented immigrants by comparing them to pests and invaders and by tying them to violent crime ( FAIR ). org, 8/31/23 ). Undocumented workers actually commit crimes at lower rates than those who were born elsewhere ( Washington Post, 2/2/29/24 ).
None of this is to suggest that the recent high rate of border encounters is n’t a topic that merits discussion. Some workers come from places like Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras—places consciously destabilized by US policy ( New Republic, 1/18/24, FAIR. org, 7/22/18 ). Our archaic, chronically neglected immigration system is overworked and underfunded, especially in regards to the courts and administrative infrastructure ( PBS, 1/15/24 ). Higher rates of illicit passing attempts will continue as long as legal channels for entering the country are unreachable and the causes of migration remain as severe as they are.
All of this merits essential conversation. However, those important conversations fall flat when articles like Pandolfo’s greatly overstate the number of unauthorised immigrants crossing the border and remaining in the country are exchanged for partisan rhetoric about a alleged crisis of illegal immigrants invading the nation on the scale of entire metropolises.
Featured image: Fox News depiction ( 2/20/24 ) of migrants being sent out of the United States.
