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Fox News Border Stats Distort Immigration Reality FAIR ([link removed])


Fox: 7.2M illegals entered the US under Biden admin, an amount greater than population of 36 states

Fox News' big scary number (2/20/24 ([link removed]) ) includes millions of people who "entered the US"—then immediately left again.

7.3 million.

This is the sensational number of purported "illegal entries" into the US from the southern border that has been making its way through public discourse. Elon Musk propagated the statistic on X, formerly Twitter, in a February 21 post ([link removed]) that was viewed 37 million times.

The New York Post (2/27/24 ([link removed]) ) quoted it in support of Musk's conspiratorial claims that Democrats are intentionally admitting undocumented migrants to garner votes. Newsweek (2/27/24 ([link removed]) ) 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 ([link removed]) ) denouncing “Biden’s far-left open border policies.”

The number comes from a Fox News article (2/20/24 ([link removed]) ) 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 face, the level of attention this has received makes sense, as it's a massive number. In fact, it would be more than two-thirds of the 10.5 million undocumented immigrants estimated to be living in the United States in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available (Pew Research Center, 11/16/23 ([link removed] of 2021%2C the nation's,1.75 million%2C or 14%25.) ).

But how was this number calculated, and what does it actually mean? The answers reveal how Fox created a fear-mongering narrative that distorts the reality of what is actually occurring at the southern border.


** Extreme narrative
------------------------------------------------------------
Twitter: I hope the public is waking up to this

Elon Musk (X, 2/21/24 ([link removed]) ) hopes "the public is waking up" to the false claim that the Biden administration is "importing" 7 million migrants—and the absurd insinuation that any non-citizen can vote in any state's elections.

Throughout his article, Pandolfo paints a picture of enormity, stressing the fact that 7.3 million is bigger than the population of most US states:

That is larger than the population 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.

At another point, he imagines all these migrants gathered together as their own city:

Were the number of illegal immigrants who entered the United States under President Biden gathered together to found a city, it would be the second-largest city in America after New York. And the total does not include an estimated additional 1.8 million known "gotaways" who evaded law enforcement, which would make it bigger than New York.

The image of these refugees coming together in the United States—and the use of the label "illegal"—suggests that these 7.3 million have entered without authorization and have stayed in the US, feeding directly into the right-wing Great Replacement ([link removed]) conspiracy theory. Indeed, Musk's quote tweet shared this commentary on the Fox article: "This is actually insane and it's by design. Biden is importing so many illegals that it's enough to replace conservative voters in many swing states."

However, a careful reader might notice the distinction briefly made between “gotaways” ([link removed]) —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 weren't intercepted at the border, what exactly does that make the rest of them?


** Misleading calculation
------------------------------------------------------------

In his article, Pandolfo explains that the numbers Fox used to conduct their analysis were derived from the federal government's reporting of border encounters:

That figure comes from US Customs and Border Protection, which has already reported 961,537 border encounters in the current fiscal year, which runs from October through September. If the current pace of illegal immigration does not slow down, fiscal year 2024 will break last year's record of 2,475,669 southwest border encounters—a number that by itself exceeds the population of New Mexico, a border state.

But this is extremely misleading: CBP "encounters" are not a tally of how many people were able to enter the country without authorization; it's a count of how many times people were stopped at the border by CBP agents. Many of these people had every right to seek entry, and a great number were turned away. Some of them were stopped more than once, and therefore were counted multiple times.

Indeed, of Fox's 7.3 million total, roughly 2.5 million were released into the country; the rest were turned back or placed in detention centers. A majority of those 2.5 million were families, and not all of them will stay long-term; these are simply the migrants who will have an opportunity to have their cases heard.


** Border patrol categories
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NPR: Title 42, a COVID-era halt on asylum applications, has ended. Here's what to expect

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 ([link removed]) ).

The CBP calculates ([link removed]) 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 ([link removed]) ).

Title 8 inadmissibles ([link removed]) are people who present themselves at a port of entry without authorization to enter, i.e., without a visa; those who withdraw their application to enter and voluntarily leave; and those who attempt to enter legally but are determined by border agents to be inadmissible due to a range of reasons ([link removed]) , including previous immigration infractions, a criminal background, lack of immunization, etc.

Title 8 apprehensions refer to people who are caught crossing the border without authorization, and are taken into custody by border patrol agents. Collectively, Title 8 encounters made up approximately 4.8 million of Fox’s 7.3 million number.

Both of these categories include many migrants seeking humanitarian protection. Migrants have a legal right ([link removed]) to request asylum at a port of entry, so including these in a calculation of "illegal" crossings is not journalism but propaganda.

Migrants falling into the category of Title 8 encounters have the option of requesting a court hearing to have an immigration judge decide their fate—which results in them either being held in detention or allowed limited release into the country as they await their hearing. The number who will ultimately be allowed to stay long-term is nearly impossible to determine, as cases can take years to resolve.

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 ([link removed]) )—refers to migrants who were turned away during the Covid pandemic without being allowed to file for asylum. The policy, instituted by President Donald Trump in March 2020, continued well into the Biden administration (FAIR.org, 4/22/22 ([link removed]) ). Biden declared an end to the Covid emergency in April 2023 (NPR, 4/11/23 ([link removed]) ), resulting in an end to Title 42–based border restrictions the following month. These expulsions made up the remaining approximately 2.5 million CBP encounters over the course of the Biden administration.

Because these expulsions did not, unlike deportations, come with legal consequences for reentry, Title 42 produced a great many repeat attempts at crossing the border, inflating the totals. 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 ([link removed]) ).


** Migrants' actual situations
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Factcheck.org: Customs and Border Protection Initial Dispositions, Southern Border Encounters by fiscal year

Factcheck.org (2/27/24 ([link removed]) ) found that Republicans "misleadingly suggested the number released into the country since Biden took office is much higher" than 2.5 million.

A comprehensive breakdown of the status of border crossers is difficult, as tallies are constantly in flux, numerical breakdowns are not up to date with one another, and backlogs on court cases leave many migrants in a limbo where the outcomes remain unsatisfyingly uncertain.

However, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does provide some numbers from February 2021 through October 2023 (the latest month with available data on releases) that give a clearer idea of the situation of unauthorized migrants (FactCheck.org, 2/27/24 ([link removed]) ).

According to that data—which measures a period in which border encounters were estimated at about 6.5 million—approximately 2.5 million of these migrants were actually released into the US. Most of these belong to families, to avoid holding children for extended periods in crowded detention facilities with adults.

These individuals are also selected with consideration of flight risk and their likelihood to present a danger to the local community, with the expectation that they will attend later immigration court hearings (Washington Post, 1/6/24 ([link removed]) ). The majority of released migrants show up for their hearings (Politifacts, 5/17/22 ([link removed]) ).

Meanwhile, about 2.8 million of the people who made up the encounters were stopped at the border and turned away over the same period—precisely what Fox's xenophobic audience thinks should be done with unauthorized migrants. This number jumps up to 3.7 million when accounting for total DHS repatriations, with the caveat that this could include some individuals who crossed the border before February 2021 and were later caught and deported by ICE.


** Misdirected conversation
------------------------------------------------------------
WaPo: Deportations, returns and expulsions

Attempts to cross the border rose sharply under Biden—as did the number of migrants turned back at the border (Washington Post, 2/11/24 ([link removed]) ).

Pandolfo’s reporting serves to do little more than catastrophize the border situation as a means of playing into a narrative of, at best, lax enforcement under the Biden administration, and at worst the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. This is despite the fact that five times the number of people have been expelled under Biden than were expelled under Trump, in part due to the increased volume of encounters (Washington Post, 2/11/24 ([link removed]) ).

There is also the tendency to demonize these undocumented migrants by comparing them to invaders and pests, as well as linking them to violent crime (FAIR.org, 8/31/23 ([link removed]) ). In fact, undocumented migrants commit such crimes at lower rates than the native-born population (Washington Post, 2/29/24 ([link removed]) ).

None of this is to say that the recent high rate of border encounters isn’t an issue worth discussing. Many migrants come from countries like Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras—places deliberately destabilized ([link removed] host communities.-,Growing numbers of people in Central America are being forced,the impact of climate change.) by US policy (New Republic, 1/18/24 ([link removed]) ; FAIR.org, 7/22/18 ([link removed]) ). Our archaic, chronically neglected immigration system is overworked and underfunded, especially in regards to the courts and administrative infrastructure (PBS, 1/15/24 ([link removed]) ). As long as legal avenues for entering the country are inaccessible, and
the factors pushing migrants from their homes remain as dire as they are, high rates of unauthorized crossing attempts will persist.

All of this merits critical discussion. But when articles like Pandolfo’s vastly exaggerate the number of unauthorized migrants crossing the border—and remaining in the country—those valuable conversations fall to the wayside, exchanged for partisan posturing around a supposed crisis of undocumented migrants invading the country on the scale of entire metropolises.
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Featured image: Fox News depiction (2/20/24 ([link removed]) ) of migrants being sent out of the United States.
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