An investigative journalist who fact-checked a racist, taxpayer-funded propaganda video released by Border Patrol said the agency has “doubled down,” re-uploading the garbage after earlier pulling it from YouTube. It had done so following her initial report on the false anti-immigrant statistics and fictional, racist imagery used by federal immigration officials on the taxpayer’s dime.
“I encourage all reporters to ask Border Patrol about its promotion of false statistics in this video,” Jean Guerrero tweeted. “Despite my fact-check, they doubled down and re-uploaded this. Check the stories they cite yourself. The numbers are fabricated.”
It’s a well-established fact that immigrants regardless of legal status are less likely than U.S.-born Americans to commit crime, but Guerrero wrote that the Border Patrol video uses misleading headlines, outright “false migrant crime statistics and a fictionalized story about a dark-skinned migrant murdering a man with a knife” to cast all immigrants as fearsome, shadowy figures out to kill you. The video, she continues, is covered in the fingerprints of White House aide and noted white supremacist, Stephen Miller.
“The publication of false crime statistics about Black and brown people painting them as more violent than whites is a common white supremacist recruiting tactic,” Guerrero wrote. “The Border Patrol’s film appeared to have been based in part on Netflix’s TV show ‘Narcos,’ as Nick Miroff observed Friday in the Washington Post—lingers on the tattoos of the dark-skinned killer, echoing Miller’s obsession with showcasing them in demonizing press releases.”
Guerrero tweeted that when she reached out to a spokesperson for Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott about the false stats, ”he did not deny their falseness or respond to that. He just said they took down the video temporarily because of copyright/attribution concerns.” In another statement on Tuesday, Scott claimed “[a]s soon as the proper approvals are obtained, I intend to share the updated video publicly.” The video was shared from Scott’s Twitter page that same day.
Speaking of Rodney Scott and social media, he was reportedly a member of the racist and vile Facebook group where members shared a doctored photo depicting the sexual assault of a leading Democratic member of Congress by Donald Trump and mocked the death of a teenaged boy in the agency’s custody last year. While Scott’s exact interactions with the “I’m 10-15” Facebook group are unclear, four agents were ultimately fired for their participation. More employees faced punishment, but internal documents reveal the agency actively protected them.
Meanwhile, the agency has blocked congressional investigators from key information on the investigation into the group, including who was behind the gross posts or even the names of the few agents who were ultimately disciplined for their participation in the group. Even Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar, among the legislators personally targeted by the group with sexist and violent expletives, has been blocked.
But we hardly hear about any of that, do we? Instead, we get taxpayer-funded, it-would-be-laughable-if-it-weren’t-so-offensive fictional propaganda continuing to attack immigrants as dangerous when it’s this administration that’s the real danger (especially to them). As the president wages the most anti-immigrant campaign in modern American history, Guerrero notes “[r]ight-wing extremism is responsible for most extremist-related violence in this country, including more than 90 percent of attacks and plots this year.”
In fact, during his recent “State of the Homeland Address,” unlawfully appointed acting Department of Homeland Security Sec. Chad Wolf used his time not to warn about white supremacist terror threats facing our communities, but instead to push more anti-immigrant garbage for his boss. “The speech was pretty typical Trump campaign fare—right down to the fact that it was being delivered at taxpayer expense inside a federal building as part of the official duties of a government official,” Douglas Rivlin of immigrant rights advocacy group America’s Voice said.