Elon Musk Criticizes Media for Not Covering Border Crisis

Poll shows Americans vastly underestimate extent of illegal immigration

Elon Musk arrives at the justice center in Wilmington, Del., on July 13, 2021. Matt Rourke/AP Photo

America’s border crisis has caught Elon Musk’s attention, with the Twitter CEO issuing several critical comments lamenting the lack of coverage of the problem by some media outlets.

Musk took to Twitter on Dec. 19 to remark on several posts related to the massive flow of people entering the United States without authorization, including on a Harvard poll showing Americans vastly underestimating the scale of illegal immigration.

The poll, a monthly collaboration between the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard (CAPS) and the Harris Poll and HarrisX, showed that the median U.S. voter appears ill informed about the crisis, underestimating the number of illegal border crossings by a factor of 10.

‘Why Is This Never in the News?’

While 64 percent of respondents correctly told the Harvard CAPS / Harris pollsters that the number of illegal border crossings had risen under President Joe Biden’s administration, the median voter incorrectly estimated the figure at between 250,000–500,000 per year.

The actual figure is far higher, with over 2.75 million people having come into the United States illegally over a 12 month period ending Sept. 30, 2022. That’s over 1 million more than in the prior year.

The poll also showed that, when respondents were presented with the true numbers, 67 percent said they want the Biden administration to issue new, stricter policies to reduce the flow of illegal immigrants into the country.

The data was shared by the @EndWokeness account on Twitter, prompting Musk to reply, “Why is this never in the news?”

In another instance, Musk commented on a clip filmed by Texas state Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican, and shared on Twitter by Fox News reporter Bill Melguin, which showed a Border Patrol processing center severely overcrowded.

“Congressman Gonzales says he took the video on Friday, when 4,600 migrants were in federal custody. Capacity is only 1,040,” Melguin captioned the video.

Musk reacted with a comment of his own: “Why do so few report about millions of people crossing the border?”

‘Dire Situation’

House Republicans on Tuesday shared a clip of Gonzales being interviewed on CBS' “Face the Nation” program, in which he described the scene at the Border Patrol Central Processing Center in El Paso, Texas, where he recorded the footage.

“There’s one bathroom, the odor is terrible,” he said. “Outside just above the hill, there’s a thousand, a little over 1,000 migrants waiting in outdoor conditions, not to mention the people that are waiting by the bridge and elsewhere.”

“It’s a very dire situation in El Paso,” he said, adding, “We’re not even at the worst of it yet.”

El Paso recently recorded an influx of around 1,500 illegal aliens coming across the border in what was among the biggest single-day crossings ever in the region.

Over the past week, border agents have encountered an average of more than 1,600 illegal aliens a day in a 268-mile stretch of the border known as the El Paso Sector, according to figures published by the city.

Illegal immigrants gather to enter a shelter at the Sacred Heart Church in El Paso, Texas, on Dec. 17, 2022. John Moore/Getty Images

‘The Border Is Secure’

While apprehensions of people crossing the border illegally have nearly doubled since Biden took office, Vice President Kamala Harris has insisted that the border is “secure,” while blaming former President Donald Trump’s administration for a “broken immigration system.”

“There is no question that we have to do what the president and I asked Congress to do. The first request we made: pass a bill to create a pathway to citizenship," Harris, who was appointed by Biden to be the White House point on the border surge, told NBC in an interview in mid-September.

“The border is secure, but we also have a broken immigration system and particular[ly] over the last four years before we came in and it needs to be fixed,” she added.

Biden, for his part, has rebuffed calls from Republicans to visit the border amid the crisis.

When asked by a reporter at a White House briefing at the beginning of December why the president was traveling to Arizona with no plans to visit the border, Biden replied: “Because there are more important things going on. They’re going to invest billions of dollars in the new enterprise in the state,” he said, referring to Taiwanese investment in a chip manufacturing facility in Phoenix.

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki once said that the last time Biden visited the border was in 2008 when he was vice president.

“He did drive through the border when he was on the campaign trail in 2008. And he is certainly familiar with the fact—and it stuck with him—with the fact that in El Paso, the border goes right through the center of town,” Psaki said during a White House briefing on Oct. 22, 2021.

The question of illegal immigration has surged to the forefront amid the looming end of Title 42, a Trump-era policy that restricted asylum applications and has been credited with helping stem the flow of unauthorized border crossings.

The rule was issued by the Trump administration in 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and was used over 2.5 million times to block asylum claims.

A federal judge in Washington ordered Title 42 to end on Dec. 21 and an appeals court rejected a bid by Republican-led states to keep it in place.

Title 42 Gets Last-Minute Extension

On Monday, 19 GOP-led states filed an emergency application (pdf) urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the lower court’s decision to strike down Title 42.

The high court agreed, with Chief Justice John Roberts issuing a temporary “administrative stay” that puts the lower court order on hold while the justices consider the multi-state request, giving Title 42 an extended lease on life.

Earlier, as the Dec. 21 deadline for Title 42 to end loomed large, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it expected as many as 14,000 daily unauthorized border crossings when the Trump-era restrictions were set to run out.

DHS recently released a six-pillar plan (pdf) on how it plans to cope with the challenges posed by the Trump-era restrictions coming to an end.

The plan includes accelerated processing for illegal aliens in custody on the border, more temporary detention tents, staffing surges, bolstering NGO capacity to receive people after they’ve been processed, and increased criminal prosecutions of smugglers.

Amid the legal back-and-forth over Title 42 and the influx of illegal immigrants, several Democrat-led cities have declared states of emergency or pleaded for federal help.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, said on Dec. 18 that the looming expiration of Title 42 could force the city to slash public services to deal with a surge in illegal aliens.

The Democrat-led city of Denver declared a state of emergency on Dec. 15 in order to stave off a local humanitarian crisis amid an influx of illegal aliens from the southern border.

And the city of El Paso, a Democrat stronghold located on the U.S.–Mexico border, on Dec. 17 declared a state of emergency amid the surge in unauthorized crossings that has left people sleeping in the streets.

Jana J. Pruet contributed to this report.