Debunking a Biden Government Talking Point about Illegal Immigration
Who’re the ignorant rubes? Immigrants hearing ‘cartel disinformation’ or the half of America that might believe this from top Biden officials?
By Todd Bensman
AUSTIN, Texas — In government communiques, press conferences, and congressional hearings under oath for a good while now, top Biden administration repeatedly blames a particular bogeyman for the unrelenting, historic southern border mass migration crisis now into its third year: human smugglers who spread “disinformation” that the border is “open.”
“DHS expects that encounters at the Southwest Border will increase as smugglers spread disinformation…” read a typical May 1, 2021 Department of Homeland Security Fact Sheet about a major upcoming policy shift. When immigrants have died in trucks or trains smuggling into America, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and White House spokespeople have gone straight to the Mexican cartel disinformation bogeyman.
The administration is now so invested in this narrative talking point that, in a May 10 press conference where Mayorkas once more blamed a major border surge on “smugglers…hard at work spreading false information,” the secretary announced an actual government initiative: a “major digital marketing campaign” to “counter the lies of smugglers” in Central and South America.
But as someone who has interviewed thousands of U.S.-bound immigrants over the last several years, I can confidently attest that this narrative is a fabrication. It is pure political misdirection deflecting blame away from Biden government policies, which the immigrants themselves most commonly cite for why they come.
I and the vast majority of immigrants know they do not spend fortunes and embark on risky journeys based on disinformation from criminal strangers, any more than on U.S. official or digital marketing claims that “the border is not open.”
They are not the mindless rubes the Biden administration makes them out to be.
Rather, immigrants calculate travel decisions based on immigrants like themselves who just freshly crossed, were admitted in, and sent back digital selfies, testimonials and other hard evidence over the cell phone transom.
In analyzing incoming information, I would argue that immigrants are far more discriminating than probably most Americans; they go to core primary source evidence.
If smugglers or equally untrustworthy U.S. government officials do tell immigrants they can or can’t get in, most won’t make a move until they hard-verify up trail first with cousin Jose or the best friend or long-time neighbor that what’s being said is actually true on the ground.
Why believe me? I say, don’t. Believe the immigrants I’ve interviewed on camera for two years — and dozens just in recent weeks who started crossing en mass from Juarez to El Paso, and from Matamoros to Brownsville as the Title 42 rapid expulsion policy they all supposedly were subjected to was nearing its May 12 end.
Immigrants just released by Border Patrol in Del Rio corresponding with friends and loved ones up and down trail that they are about to board buses to U.S. cities. March 2022 photo by Todd Bensman
During a major surge of mass illegal crossings from Juarez to El Paso last month, Mayorkas and senior CBP officials repeatedly vowed that the border was not open, and that these poor innocents had fallen prey to cartel disinformation.
But these three Venezuelans and many others besides who I interviewed were no mindless dupes of disinformation. They told me they were going because friends and family they knew well had just crossed and were chilling in Washington State or authorized on the Texas side to take buses to New York.
This Venezuelan man about to cross told me he was about to do it with his wife and child, not because a smuggler told him the border was open or that Mayorkas said it was closed, but because friends had just done it two days earlier who were reporting back that they were now in Colorado and New Jersey.
“They [the Americans] let them in,” he said. “They get permits, immigration papers.”
These aren’t just Internet wives’ tales. I always check. At the McAllen, Texas bus station, for instance, I met countless immigrants who’d crossed illegally, were not Title 42’d back, and instead were released on their own recognizance to settle in interior America. And sending selfies of themselves, thumbs-up on the bus or in plush Manhattan hotel rooms, to everyone they know still down trail.
So why would top Biden government officials keep spinning such an obvious fable about cartel disinformation robbing immigrant dupes of their smuggling money?
Because the act of repeatedly blaming loathsome criminal con artists for enticing millions of ostensibly stupid marks to invest thousands journeying over the American border is a political device to displace blame from the Biden administration and the Democratic Party for policies that have allowed millions to enter and stay and remains a major tractor beam enticement.
It is time to call out this politically motivated transfer of blame as the lie that it is because naïve and ignorant receiving American audiences and major media outlets are uncritically accepting this hogwash at face value. Media outlets are trying to provide cover for the blame transference.
Who is not naïve or uncritical of claims? Certainly not these Venezuelan gentlemen I interviewed in Matamoros this month or hundreds of other immigrants I’ve met in recent years. These three young men were typically smart, saavy and fully connected to the Internet and social media platforms. All were planning to swim the Rio Grande to Brownsville among thousands who were doing so right then only because they all knew someone just let in.
“Do you all know someone who was just let in?” I asked.
“Si, si, si,” they all answered in unison, naming friends all just admitted into America or, in one man’s case, a cousin who’d just crossed and was happily staying in a Tennessee hotel. He showed me the paper with the man’s new address written down.
I’ve never met an intending border crosser who didn’t have a modern cell phone fully connected to the Internet.
If testimonials don’t expose this lie, then maybe basic logic might help. Cartel operatives and smugglers are untrustworthy liars sure, but they’re also good businessmen and women.
No one knows better than smugglers the power of immigrant selfies from the states. Telling a lie that the border is easily breached, when it isn’t, might work once or twice on the first rubes. But not millions of times.
Lying about this kills business instantly, while happy immigrants who paid their smuggling fees and send back video of their children enrolling in Chicago public schools keeps the cash register ringing for months and years.
The half of America willing to fall for this administration blame displacement tactic could sure learn a thing or two about real life, from the immigrants and from their smugglers.
