Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has called out the mainstream media for not reporting on a massive border crossing in Texas that has, so far, seen 400,000 immigrants illegally enter the U.S. in less than a year.
UPDATE December 19, 2022: Elon has commented again on the situation at the border between Texas and Mexico, asking Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, “Why do so few report about millions of people crossing the border?” Melugin has been reporting on huge caravans of illegal immigrants crossing the border, and brought to light one video of 1,000+ people illegally crossing into El Paso, Texas that has gone viral, earning more than 7 million views as of this writing.
Musk also responded to a tweet from Washington Examiner reporter Anna Giaritelli, in which she noted that the mayor of El Paso has declared a state of emergency due to the influx of illegal immigrants. Musk responded saying “Yikes!”
ORIGINAL POST BELOW:
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is, by now, well known for speaking his mind on even the most hot-button political topics. In 2020, for example, he told the U.S. government to “FREE AMERICA NOW.” In 2021, he proclaimed in a TIME Magazine interview that “vaccine” mandates are wrong and un-American. Now, the engineer/entrepreneur is calling out the media for not covering the massive wave of illegal immigrants entering the U.S. via its border with Mexico.
Musk, apparently, felt the urge to comment on the border-crossing issue after Fox News International Correspondent Bill Melugin posted a series of tweets showing hundreds of migrants illegally entering Eagle Pass, Texas. (Eagle Pass is a city that borders the city of Piedras Negras in Mexico, which is to the southwest and across the Rio Grande.) In the tweet immediately below Melugin shows one particular “huge single group of 290 [illegal immigrants]” crossing into the American border city.
In the same tweet thread Melugin went on to note that Eagle Pass is part of Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, which has seen approximately 400,000 illegal crossings since October, 2021. That figure, Melugin notes, is larger than the population of New Orleans. And the groups that are coming in are, according to the correspondent, “predominately [made up of] single adults.”
“400k from one border crossing in less than a year?” Musk wrote in a tweet replying to Melugin’s thread. “That’s correct,” Melugin said in response, “400,000 in just the Del Rio sector since fiscal year 2022 began on October 1st, and that does not include gotaways [sic].”
In response to Melugin’s answer, Musk then wrote: “Strange that this receives very little attention in the media.”
Indeed, while Fox News is—extensively—covering what it has titled a “huge immigration crisis,” with many videos on the topic on its YouTube channel, other “mainstream news” outlets have been less active. CNN, for example, offers little coverage on the current illegal immigration crisis upon which Musk has commented. And when the “news” organization does report on the crisis, it has a different spin than that of Fox News; highlighting individual stories of people crossing over rather than the staggering number of illegal immigrants per se.
It should be noted that along with Fox News’ reporting on the crisis Texas Governor Greg Abbot has also been extremely vocal about the situation at the state’s border with Mexico. In the tweet immediately below, for example, Abbott says—in an interview with Fox News—that Texas is “using the National Guard to turn back illegal immigrants who are trying to come across the border and the Texas Department of Public Safety is arresting illegal immigrants who do make it into the state of Texas and returning them to the border.” The governor adds that “We have multiple strategies that we’re using; the busing to places like New York and D.C. is just one of those strategies.”
For those unfamiliar, this “busing” strategy to which Abbot refers calls for busing the illegal immigrants who make it into Texas to New York and Washington D.C. Unlike the illegal migrant crisis in general, however, outlets in the mainstream media, from both sides of the political aisle, have been reporting on the strategy. Although with different spins, of course. An August 8, 2022 report from National Public Radio (NPR), for example, reported on Abbot’s strategy by highlighting NYC Mayor Eric Adams‘ criticisms of the tactic, as well as the pitfalls of the busing campaign—without ever mentioning why Abbot thinks the busing is necessary; nor the downsides of what’s happening with the illegal immigrant crisis at the border.
Authorities at the border are also reporting on the crisis via updates on Twitter. In the tweet below Chief Patrol Agent Jason D. Owens reports “The Del Rio Sector is still encountering many unaccompanied children.” The agent adds that “With high water levels & temperatures in the triple digits, crossing illegally is extremely dangerous, especially for children.”
In 2020, ostensibly due to the COVID-19 “pandemic,” the Trump administration used so-called Title 42 expulsions—which are removals by the U.S. government of persons who have recently been in a country where a communicable disease was present—to expel approximately 1.8 illegal immigrants from the country. As of this writing the Biden administration still continues to use the expulsions and has chosen not to retire the emergency power.
Feature image: Chief Patrol Agent Jason D. Owen
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