Title 42 expiration destroys Marjorie Taylor Greene’s 'border invasion' conspiracy theory

19 May 2023

Thursday, May 11 marked the end of the United States' pandemic-era Title 42 border policy. Although COVID-19 is still highly contagious, it isn't nearly the health crisis it was in 2020 or 2021. COVID-19 vaccines are plentiful, restrictions have been lifted, and most COVID-19 infections of 2023 aren't going to be fatal or require hospitalization.

Far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) has been predicting that end of Title 42 restrictions on migrants at the U.S./Mexico border would create a dangerous crisis — one she insists the Biden Administration would be to blame for. But in his May 19 column, liberal Washington Post opinion writer Greg Sargent stresses that the border doomsday scenario Greene predicted has hardly come to pass.

"In the run-up to the expiration of COVID-19 restrictions on those seeking asylum, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene repeatedly predicted that our country would be overrun by migrant hordes from the south," Sargent explains. "Hundreds of thousands would 'rush the border,' the Georgia Republican proclaimed, warning of an 'Imminent Invasion!'"

The columnist continues, "Since the Title 42 border policy ended last week, the average number of migrants crossing the border has dropped. Yet Greene hasn't missed a beat: On Thursday, (May 18), she introduced impeachment articles against President Biden, proclaiming that the supposed migrant invasion is central to her case. She raged: 'He is a direct threat to our national security.'"

Sargent goes on to note that fear-mongering over the U.S./Mexico border is "essential to MAGA's identify," noting that Greene is calling for the impeachment of President Joe Biden as well as Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Republicans, however, may not have the votes to impeach either Biden or Mayorkas in the U.S. House of Representatives, where they have only a small single-digit majority under House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California). And even if they were impeached in the House, the impeachments would hit a brick wall in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate.

"The GOP addiction to border invasion imagery is such that many Republicans can see migrant children — once worthy of bipartisan assistance — only as a threat to be repulsed," Sargent laments. "They want to impeach Mayorkas — and possibly Biden — partly over a border surge that hasn't happened. All this comes as Republicans regularly hold border photo-ops in buffoonish military gear and spend huge sums on ads depicting the border as something out of an apocalyptic video game.… The border crisis, or at least the version that Greene and her cohorts keep invoking, exists largely in the collective MAGA imagination."

Read Greg Sargent's full Washington Post opinion column at this link (subscription required).

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