House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy Echoes False Claims of Terrorists Crossing The Border

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The racist and xenophobic white nationalist Republican Sedition Party is a post-truth, post-policy disinformation and propaganda machine that engages in performative politics to provide content to the conservative media entertainment complex.

They’ve got nothing but race-baiting and fear mongering over immigrants coming to America in the “browning” of America. White grievances over the loss of white privilege is all they’ve got.

Abe Ortiz reports at Daily Kos, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy went to the border to lie:

Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has no constructive policy ideas, solutions, or even clever tweets. What he has are plenty of lies and the Republicans’ anti-immigrant playbook, old and worn out as the family Bible. He trotted both to the southern border near El Paso, Texas, on Monday.

Now, Kevin claimed he was there out of concern for refugee children arriving to the U.S. after being blocked by the previous administration. That’s interesting of him, because he sure was quiet about these kids when that president was violating their rights. But remember, Kevin wasn’t there to talk solutions because he has none, and predictably spewed from that anti-immigrant playbook. Except the lies were so outlandish that some of his own House colleagues were left in shock.

“Speaking outside El Paso on Monday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said border agents he had met earlier that day issued dire warnings that suspected terrorists are trying to cross into the United States via Mexico,” The Washington Post reported. “They talked about, ‘They’re on the list,’” Kevin claims border agents said. “The terrorist watch list.” He claimed, “You saw it in their eyes.”

It truly is Academy Award season, because I haven’t seen drama like that since The Notebook. The problem is there’s plenty of reason to believe Kevin’s full of shit. “I have have the same security clearance as you do,” Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, a military veteran and member of the House Armed Services committee, tweeted at McCarthy. “Can you have your office arrange for a classified briefing for members to see where this info derived from?”

As I previously posted, Senator Lindsey Graham recently revived the Tea Party’s “terror babies” crossing the border meme from 2010. Trump Fluffer Sen. Lindsey Graham Says He Is Terrified of ‘Terror Babies’ Crossing The Border. So are we now going back to Trump’s Baseless Claims About Prayer Rugs Found at the Border, a long-running and still unproved conspiracy theory that dates back to at least 2005?

The Washington Post adds:

McCarthy’s claims echo repeated assertions by President Donald Trump and members of his administration that terrorists were using the southern border to sneak into the United States, a line Trump often used to justify his attempts to build a wall and tighten immigration rules.

But those claims withered under scrutiny.

As The Post’s Fact Checker found, his administration never offered any proof of this claim and never identified any terrorists caught at the U.S.-Mexico border. What’s more, the State Department under Trump said that there’s “no credible evidence indicating that international terrorist groups have established bases in Mexico, worked with Mexican drug cartels, or sent operatives via Mexico into the United States.”

The State Department also noted at the time that “there have been no cases of terrorist groups exploiting these gaps to move operations through the region.”

COVID super-spreader Governor Gregg Abbott of Texas is also trying to blame immigrants for bringing COVID-19 to Texas. No, that would be the anti-science, anti-maskers, and anti-vaxxers Texas Republicans whom governor Abbott just green-lighted to engage in reckless and irresponsible behavior for Spring Break that may create a vector for a new variant of the COVID-19 virus to develop which may render the current vaccines ineffective after he declared “It is now time to open Texas 100%.” (Maybe immigrants took him literally as an invitation to come to Texas). Despite Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s Claims, There Is No Evidence Migrants At Border Are Spreading COVID. See also, For centuries, migrants have been said to pose public health risks. They don’t. It is a racist trope.

MSNBC’s Steve Benen had a great write-up that more than generously noted that perhaps McCarthy is privy to some classified information as a Gang of Eight member. But at the same time, Kevin “wasn’t referencing a briefing or classified intelligence; he said he’d spoken to border agents who allegedly told him about apprehended members of the terrorist watch list.” Nor had Customs and Border Protection itself said anything remotely resembling Kevin’s claim, and you know they’d love any excuse to expand their bloated agency even more.

“Similarly, Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) said that in her recent meetings with border agents, she also didn’t hear any references to terrorist suspects getting caught at the border,” Benen continued. If there’s any congressmember who should be the go-to on border and immigration issues, it’s Rep. Veronica Escobar, who slammed McCarthy’s visit as a stunt and criticized him for using her community as a prop. She in fact offered to introduce him to local folks on the ground who could educate him on what’s really happening at the border. It was an offer he, unsurprisingly, did not take up.

“I invite you to also visit with the advocates and attorneys who have been working with the immigrant community providing humanitarian assistance to asylum-seekers to better understand the humanitarian perspective,” her March 11 letter to him said. “If we are to work on meaningful border and immigration policy, it’s important to see the complete picture. My office would be glad to assist with setting up a meeting with advocates.”

Escobar also held a press conference on Monday to explain the reality on the ground and to offer up ideas by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to help aid the unaccompanied children who are now being allowed into the U.S. by the Biden administration after being blocked by the previous administration, but unfortunately it got a fraction of the media attention of McCarthy’s theatrics. It’s not like Escobar’s presser was inaccessible to them either, because she tweeted the Zoom link.

Advocates like the Border Network for Human Rights echoed Escobar’s words. “At the end of the day, Rep. McCarthy and the other Republican delegates do not actually care about these children and families. They are merely pawns in a political power play that has time and again led to violence and heartbreak for border communities,” the organization said in a statement received by Daily Kos. The organization also confirmed that McCarthy and his delegation did not reach out to key stakeholders.

“The real crisis we are witnessing is a moral and political one precipitated by our lawmakers’ failure to pass inclusive and just immigration reform over the past decade,” the organization continued. “Seeking asylum is a legal right, and U.S. law states that asylum seekers may remain in the U.S. while their case is pending. It is unconscionable to deny children and families this right, as well as their dignity and access to basic resources and institutional support.”

Rep. Kevin McCarthy has repeatedly demonstrated over the years that he is sorely unfit to serve in Congress. If he cannot produce irrefutable evidence to support his claim that terrorists on the terrorist watch list have been arrested crossing the border, Americans should demand that he resign from office. Enough with his childish antics and conservative media stunts.





4 thoughts on “House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy Echoes False Claims of Terrorists Crossing The Border”

  1. CNN Fact Check, “Fact-checking GOP claims that people on terror watch list are ‘rushing’ the border”, https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/17/politics/republican-southern-border-terror-watchlist-fact-check/index.html

    Facts First: There’s no evidence of a sudden rush of individuals on the terror watch list showing up at the southern border. The information that is available is vague and leaves many questions unanswered. That said, it’s entirely false to imply a small number of individuals on the terror watch list coming to the southern border is a new phenomenon. Furthermore, it’s worth noting that being on the FBI’s terror watch list does not mean someone is a terrorist or has proven ties to terrorists.

    On Tuesday, CNN’s requests to McCarthy’s office for evidence supporting his claims went unacknowledged for hours. Then around 2:30 pm, Axios reported that according to an unnamed congressional aide, CBP had confirmed to Congress on Tuesday that “four people arrested at the southern border since Oct. 1 match names on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database.”

    After the Axios report published, a representative from McCarthy’s office pointed to it in response to CNN’s request for comment. According to the report, one of the individuals was from Serbia and the other three were from Yemen.

    On Tuesday evening, in response to the Axios reporting, Arizona Democrat Rep. Ruben Gallego challenged the substance of those claims in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, saying, “There is no correlation from what I’m reading to what Mr. McCarthy and other people are talking about.”

    “I actually just had a briefing about 90 minutes ago regarding this issue and none of what I heard in that briefing matches this information,” Gallego told CNN.

    The Axios reporting does not clarify when these four individuals were apprehended but says the arrests occurred at some point during the five and a half months between October and March 16. Fox News reported Tuesday that one of the individuals “was encountered on Jan. 28.” [So only one of the four during Biden’s presidency?] It’s also unclear whether the individuals were actually on the list or if their names merely matched those among the hundreds of thousands kept in the database. And it’s currently unknown if the four people are still in custody or have been released.

    After repeated requests to clarify McCarthy’s claim, Customs and Border Protection provided CNN a statement Tuesday evening, which noted that “encounters of known and suspected terrorists at our borders are very uncommon.”

    -Just say he lied!

  2. Aaron Rupar at Vox reports “Republicans revive one of Trump’s most notorious immigration lies”, https://www.vox.com/22333880/kevin-mccarthy-southern-border-terrorists-immigration-joe-biden

    Kevin McCarthy is trying to get people to believe that Biden is asleep at the wheel as terrorists infiltrate the country.

    There’s just one problem: There’s no evidence it’s true.

    US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sent Vox a statement on Tuesday saying, “Our border security efforts are layered and include multiple levels of rigorous screening that allow us to detect and prevent people who pose national security or public safety risks from entering the United States,” and that “encounters of known and suspected terrorists at our borders are very uncommon.”

    Axios, citing testimony CBP offered to Congress on Tuesday, reported that “four people arrested at the southern border since Oct. 1 match names on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database.” While some took that news as vindicating McCarthy’s claim, more information is needed — it’s unclear when the four people in question were apprehended (it could have been while Trump was president) and whether they were actually on the list or just had the same names as people who are. It’s also worth keeping in mind for context that the watchlist stops more than 3,700 people from flying into the US on a given year.

    Despite questions about what exactly McCarthy was talking about, on Tuesday morning another Republican who traveled to the border, Rep. John Katko (R-NY), went on Fox News and spread the same rumor and innuendo.

    Unsurprisingly, Fox News anchors didn’t press Katko for any information on who the border agent with this intelligence is, or for any evidence to back up his talking point, which has been a major one on Fox News since the border press event. And it would be easier to give Republicans the benefit of the doubt if they didn’t have a long history of spreading misinformation about terrorists crossing the border.

    Republicans are reviving one of Trump’s most notorious lies

    While he was in office, Trump used fact-free claims about terrorists trying to cross the southern border to sensationalize the risks presented by immigration policies that fell short of sealing it off with a spike-topped wall.

    In January 2019, for instance, Trump posted a quickly debunked tweet alleging people from Muslim-majority countries are crossing the border with bad intentions, and leaving prayer rugs behind. (The prayer-rug-at-the-border myth dates back to at least 2014, when it first appeared on Breitbart.)

    NOTE: Actually, the first time rumors of Muslim prayer rugs at the border appear to have crossed over into mainstream media coverage was in 2005. A 2005 fact check of a TV ad claiming that terrorists were slipping across the southern border found that there were immigrants of Middle Eastern descent crossing into the U.S. through Mexico, but basically no proof any of them were connected to a terrorist group. FactCheck.org, https://www.factcheck.org/2005/10/we-need-a-fence/

    As recently as this January, Donald Trump claimed “we have terrorists from the Middle East coming into our country through the southern border.”

    Not only is there no evidence of this, but Trump’s own State Department debunked it. From the Washington Post:

    In reports issued during the Trump administration, the State Department said that there was “no credible evidence indicating that international terrorist groups have established bases in Mexico, worked with Mexican drug cartels, or sent operatives via Mexico into the United States” and that “there have been no cases of terrorist groups exploiting these gaps to move operations through the region.”

    Trump’s baseless January 2019 tweet about prayer rugs came amid the government shutdown he instigated as part of a failed effort to strong-arm Congress into funding his border wall. Now, 26 months later, Republicans are using a similar talking point to attack Biden, who has argued for treating undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers with more humanity than Trump did.

    Republicans like Kevin McCarthy appear to be sensationalizing things — and getting help from uncritical Fox News coverage to try to terrify voters into turning on Biden.

  3. Washington Post Fact Checker “House Republicans’ claim about ‘known or suspected terrorists’ at the border”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/17/house-republicans-claim-about-known-or-suspected-terrorists-border/

    As midterm elections were approaching in 2018, President Donald Trump and members of his administration falsely claimed that thousands of “known or suspected” terrorists were being caught at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    The real number ranges from around three to a dozen per year, according to news reports, official statistics and a whistleblower complaint from a former top official at the Department of Homeland Security.

    The Facts

    Attempts to cross the southern border without authorization have been surging again in recent months, as they did at several points during the Trump administration. Republicans are seeking to pressure President Biden on the issue. But there is no indication that any bona fide terrorist has been encountered at any point along the southern border.

    The FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database, or watch list, includes “individuals known or reasonably suspected to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism.” This is often abbreviated as the “known or suspected terrorist” (KST) list.

    Note that a crime related to terrorism could mean fraud, immigration, firearms, drug, perjury and obstruction of justice offenses, as well as false statements and “general conspiracy charges,” according to a 2018 report by the Homeland Security and Justice departments. The crime must bear some link to terrorism for an offender to make the watch list, but it doesn’t have to involve violence or material support for a terrorist plot.

    A suspected terrorist is “reasonably suspected to be engaging in, has engaged in, or intends to engage in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism and/or terrorist activities.” Some individuals on the list are derivative contacts — say, a relative of someone with suspected terrorist ties.

    In 2018, NBC News reported that U.S. officials apprehended “six immigrants at ports of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border in the first half of fiscal year 2018 whose names were on a federal government list of known or suspected terrorists.”

    For the full fiscal 2018, the total number was closer to 12, CNN reported: “Roughly a dozen individuals who are not U.S. citizens and are on the terror watch list were encountered by federal officials at the U.S. southern border from October 2017 to October 2018, according to an administration official familiar with data from Customs and Border Protection.”

    However, Axios reported there were six arrests that year: “In fiscal 2018, six people from Yemen and Bangladesh were arrested.” (What about the other six? Were they “encountered” but not “arrested”? Does CNN have its numbers wrong? Does Axios?)

    [T]he State Department in annual reports consistently says terrorist groups are not moving agents through the U.S.-Mexico border.

    “There was no credible evidence indicating international terrorist groups established bases in Mexico, worked directly with Mexican drug cartels, or sent operatives via Mexico into the United States,” the most recent report, covering 2019, says.

    A House Republican aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said a Border Patrol agent told Katko that several individuals on the terror watch list had been identified along the southern border recently. When Republicans requested more information, U.S. Customs and Border Protection told them that four individuals on the “known or suspected terrorist” list had been encountered since October, the aide said. Katko is now seeking a classified briefing to get a fuller picture, the aide said.

    One of the individuals, a Serbian man, was encountered in the past month and turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Republican aide said. “We don’t have any other details besides that,” the aide said. Axios reported that the three others were from Yemen.

    Without more details, McCarthy and Katko’s claim appears overblown, said Jason M. Blazakis, director of the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

    “Bottom line: Most terrorists are already here — they are American citizens these days,” he said, referring to right-wing extremism and the groups that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. “They are part of groups like the Proud Boys and the Atomwaffen Division. McCarthy is trying to latch onto a nonissue.”

    We contacted the White House, DHS and CBP, asking them to confirm or deny Katko’s account. Instead, a CBP representative said encounters with known or suspected terrorists were “very uncommon.”

    We don’t know what the Border Patrol agent told Republicans in Texas. However, by Republicans’ own admission, McCarthy was wrong to suggest that the individuals on the list came from China, Iran and Sri Lanka. He also mentioned Yemen, which appears to be correct. We’re told by a House Republican aide that one individual came from Serbia, a country McCarthy didn’t mention.

  4. I will pay one million dollars to anyone who can find the heads that go with Jan Brewer’s headless bodies in the desert.

    One. Million. Dollars.

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