Explaining the Right: Why the GOP loves lying about an 'open border'

Following the terrorist attack in New Orleans, Donald Trump is once again fearmongering about “open borders.” Referencing a false Fox News report that the network later retracted, Trump alleged that lax border policies under the Biden administration are to blame for the attack.

The rhetoric was a return to form for Trump and other Republicans, like Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who have used immigration as a convenient talking point to attack Democrats. 

But the right’s claim that the U.S.-Mexico border is somehow “open” is completely untrue.

President Joe Biden hasn’t opened the border, nor have any prominent Democrats—even those significantly more left than Biden—suggested that the border be “open.” What Biden has done, however, is rescind or rein in many of the harshest border-related policies that Trump implemented during his first term. 

Biden has emphasized legal immigration (versus a strict policy of repatriation) and ending family separation, and he has even upset some Democrats by utilizing more stringent policies like deportation without asylum hearings.

But still, Republicans insist that “open borders” exist. Why?

Fear about border security is an extremely potent motivator for conservative voters, so it’s in the GOP’s best interest to keep those voters in a fevered pitch of worry about who or what could be coming across the southern border into the United States.

That is why right-wing media outlets like Fox News constantly highlight the purported threat of immigration—either by hyping up crimes committed by immigrants or promoting perceived connections between terrorism and immigration. 

Republican candidates across the board are promoting these falsehoods with alarming frequency, despite crime declining since Trump left office and longstanding data showing that native-born Americans commit more crimes than immigrants.

The GOP’s attack on Democrats’ immigration policy is even more specious when considering that Trump already had four years of his presidency—much of that with a Republican majority in Congress—to “fix” the perceived immigration issue. But Republicans rejected longstanding bipartisan compromises that combined border security and a path to citizenship, and instead entertained Trump’s border wall project.

The wall was never completed, and it so far has not deterred immigrants from crossing. There’s no practical way to build a wall that someone desperate to cross won’t find a way to climb over.

Trump’s other signature immigration policy, family separation, resulted in children being taken from their families and put in jail-like detention camps. The operation was condemned across the world by figures including the Pope, and the Biden administration has spent years trying to reunite the families affected.

Promoting the notion that the border is “open” is not only false, but it also helps fuel rhetoric that has literally killed people. In 2018, a mass shooter killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, echoing Trump/Fox News rhetoric about an “invasion” of immigrants from Mexico.

Since then, the right has not stopped pushing this fake storyline. Both the Republican Party and conservative media see it as an effective tool that brings in an audience and gains voters, many of whom believe that Trump will once and for all close an “open border” that was never even open in the first place.