The Washington Post published a piece by opinion writer Jennifer Rubin on Wednesday in which Rubin claimed, “[T]here has been no surge of arrivals outside the normal fluctuation of migration,” in regard to the ongoing border crisis. This claim is false.
According to statistics revealed two weeks ago by U.S. border officials, a surge of about 30,000 unaccompanied minors crossed the border in the month of February. This one-month total is greater than the number that crossed for the entirety of 2020. It is five times higher than the migrants who came in January. Additionally, the total number of people apprehended at the border in February was 28 percent more than the month prior.
“Migrant apprehensions at U.S.-Mexico border are surging again,” the Pew Research Center noted last week. “The U.S. Border Patrol apprehended nearly 100,000 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in February, the tenth consecutive month of increased apprehensions and a return to levels last seen in mid-2019,” the report stated.
As MSNBC also acknowledged, “The influx of unaccompanied migrants under 18 at border facilities is due in part to the Biden administration’s reversal of a Trump-era policy that expelled unaccompanied migrant children, along with all other migrants, under provisions invoked during the coronavirus pandemic.”
“[T]he number of migrants apprehended at the southwestern border expected to reach a two-decade high,” the New York Times reported on March 20. “The Biden administration is struggling to find space for migrant children and teenagers who have recently arrived at the border, with some sleeping on gym mats with foil sheets in processing facilities as they wait to be transferred to shelters contracted with the Office of Refugee Resettlement.”
A month ago, President Joe Biden canceled former President Donald Trump’s policy that mandated asylum-seekers from Central America remain in Mexico until the United States reviews the cases. More than 550 unaccompanied minors on average are being detained each day at the border, as noted by Federalist Political Editor John Daniel Davidson.
According to a report from a leaked document obtained by Axios a few days ago, an estimated 823 unaccompanied minors have been in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol for over 10 days.
“The surge is a direct result of policies and messaging from the Biden administration before the election,” Davidson said on Fox Business this week.
On March 10, the Washington Post even acknowledged there is a border “crisis.” The “magnitude came into clearer focus Wednesday as the new administration was holding record numbers of unaccompanied migrant teens and children in detention cells for far longer than legally allowed and federal health officials fell further behind in their race to find space for them in shelters,” noted the Post.
The false claim by Rubin comes weeks after the Washington Post corrected a report on a phone call between then-President Trump and Georgia’s chief elections investigator Frances Watson. Apparently, the left-leaning outlet is free to erroneously fact-check everyone else but fails to do a little introspection.
Nonetheless, despite the clear facts laid out by virtually all outlets, including even the Washington Post itself, the outlet’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler did not respond to a request from The Federalist asking him to confirm that Rubin’s claim was false — as it demonstrably is. Frankly, Kessler should have already issued a letter in the newspaper. He does so daily and claims to be dedicated to “closely” verifying the validity of claims “at least five days a week.”
There is no doubt Rubin’s claim is false. Will the arbiters of truth at the Washington Post say so?
