President-elect Donald Trump and his allies in Congress have blamed the deadly New Orleans truck attack on President Joe Biden’s border policies even though the attacker was a U.S. citizen.
“When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social as information was still trickling out about the ramming attack on Wednesday morning.
“The crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody has ever seen before,” he wrote. “Our hearts are with all of the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers of the New Orleans Police Department.”
Officials later identified the attacker as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, of Texas, a U.S. citizen and an Army veteran.
Fox News had reported Wednesday morning that the driver, who was shot and killed by police after he ran over a crowd of people on New Orleans’s famous Bourbon Street, had crossed over the border from Mexico earlier this week. The network walked back its reporting later Wednesday, but not before Trump and some of his allies echoed it.
Donald Trump Jr., the president-elect’s eldest son, posted a news article about the erroneous report, saying, “Biden’s parting gift to America — migrant terrorists.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., posted shortly after the initial segment: “New Orleans terrorist attacker is said to have come across the border in Eagle Pass TWO DAYS AGO!!! Shut the border down!!!”
Later Wednesday, Fox News quoted Trump’s Truth Social posted and then noted, “To be clear, the suspect was born in the United States.”
Despite Fox’s clarifications, Trump doubled down on his message Thursday in posts on Truth Social, saying that the Biden administration’s handling of the nation’s borders has led to “a violent erosion of Safety, National Security, and Democracy.”
“With the Biden ‘Open Border’s Policy’ I said, many times during Rallies, and elsewhere, that Radical Islamic Terrorism, and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe,” he wrote in another post. “That time has come, only worse than ever imagined.”
Other Republicans didn’t directly refer to Fox’s original report but still seemed to blame the situation at the border for the attack and used the opportunity to push the larger GOP platform of a vulnerable border harming national security.
In an appearance on Fox News, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Thursday also sought to portray the attack as a border security failure, said that congressional Republicans had been “ringing the alarms” about “the idea that dangerous people were coming here in droves and setting up potentially terrorist cells around the country.”
Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., wrote in response to images of the dead suspect on X Wednesday that the “open border,” the nation’s immigration system and Congress’ inaction on the issue “have created the perfect storm to endanger Americans.”
Similarly, Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., shared on X a video of an interview he did Wednesday about the terror attack and wrote, “We must secure the border & guarantee our local enforcement is empowered to enforce the law and protect the American people from these cowards!”
NBC News reported earlier this year that about 0.014% of migrants who had tried to cross the border in fiscal year 2024, or fewer than 2 out of every 10,000, were on the terrorist watchlist. The total number who have tried to cross during the Biden administration is just over 1,700. During the Trump presidency, it was 1,400.
A Trump spokesperson on Thursday defended the president-elect’s remarks surrounding the New Orleans attack.
“President Trump rightfully highlighted that criminals crossing the border have committed some of the most heinous crimes this country has witnessed in its history,” Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, said in a statement. “It is also true that radical Islamic terrorism and its warped ideology have crossed into our country and infected those looking to spread hate and violence.”
The offices of Greene, Johnson, Gimenez and Crane did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Fox News also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
