Fox News’ latest round of anti-immigrant fearmongering seizes on a report that the Department of Homeland Security ended a border security program that was never actually implemented – and was scrapped based on concerns it would baselessly fuel media fearmongering. Fox used the news to stoke fears about “illegals crossing into this country.”

According to the Associated Press, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) scrapped a proposal for a never-initiated program to use a color-coded index system to measure border security. The program, proposed by agency staff, would have used a color system to measure miles along the U.S. border “where the Border Patrol was likely to capture illegal immigrants.” Red would indicate “high risk,” yellow “medium risk,” and green “low risk.” The program was never implemented, having been scrapped after DHS consultants agreed it was “‘an oversimplification of a very complex problem,’” and warned it could lead media figures to sensationalize border security and “produce misleading stories of an out-of-control border.”

DHS consultants explained that because the program would measure border security in just “‘three large baskets,’” (red, yellow, and green) -- and because two of the baskets could be interpreted as indicating poor security -- “reporters with an appetite for eye-catching headlines” could use the index to fuel sensational, fearmongering reports of an “out-of-control border.”

Fox News hosts immediately seized on the DHS announcement to do just that. On the April 22 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, anchor Heather Nauert repeatedly stoked fears of “border insecurity,” telling viewers to “get used to … illegals crossing into this country” because DHS officials scrapped the “color-coded bored index” “while you were sleeping.” Nauert’s report accompanied on-screen graphics of immigrants crossing the border in large numbers, and scaling a wall; she said viewers should “get used to scenes like this”:

Fox has a long history of baselessly stoking anti-immigrant fears to create the false “impression that illegal immigration has soared to unprecedented levels” when in reality, multiple studies show that illegal immigration is “now at its lowest level since 2003” and that it has been declining steadily since 2008. The AP noted that Border Patrol apprehensions fell to a 44-year low last year, and though that number does not give a complete picture, it may indicate that “the border is relatively secure.”