Republicans Use Trump-Era Photo to Criticize Biden on Border Security

Conservatives blanketed users’ feeds across social media on Monday with a photo of what they insinuated was a surge of migrants numbering in the thousands crossing the U.S. border from Mexico.

From former congressional candidates to cryptocurrency influencers, conservatives discussed the photo in apocalyptic terms, characterizing the group pictured as an invading force that had only grown increasingly emboldened by the perception of weakness in President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

The migrant crisis has attracted greater scrutiny with this week’s end of Title 42, a Trump-era policy allowing asylum seekers to be turned away under the guise of the COVID-19 health emergency. The Biden administration fought to maintain the law in court but was ultimately unsuccessful, raising concerns from critics that the administration is left with few tools to stem the tide of undocumented migrants seeking to enter the U.S.

Drone footage from outlets like Fox News shot over the weekend showed long lines of migrants entering the U.S. through places like Brownsville, Texas. But some Twitter users, trying to illustrate the problem under Biden’s watch, used a photo showing a scene from when President Donald Trump was in office.

Guillermo Arias, a Tijuana-based photojournalist, told his own story in the captions of the pictures, which are still widely available on hosting sites like Getty Images.

While the photos have been used to suggest an impending invasion of the U.S., the aerial view of Honduran migrants was actually taken on October 27, 2018, in the southern Mexican town of Arriaga on their way to San Pedro Tapanatepec.