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Fox News keeps linking the New Orleans truck attack to border security despite no apparent link

The network featured future Trump officials who emphasized border security, even when they noted the suspect was American

Written by Gideon Taaffe, Jack Winstanley, Jane Lee & Helena Hind

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Update (1/3/25): This article has been updated with additional examples.

After a truck-ramming attack killed at least 14 people at a New Year's celebration in New Orleans, Fox News misreported that the vehicle used came across the southern border two days earlier, implying that the suspected perpetrator — later identified as an Army veteran born in the U.S. — had also crossed the border. 

Although the network has seemingly attempted to quietly walk back the false information, Fox personalities and guests — including some former and incoming Trump administration picks — have continued to baselessly connect an act of terror reportedly committed by a U.S. citizen to the southern border in order to fearmonger about terrorists entering the country. 
 

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  • After a deadly truck attack in New Orleans, Fox News quickly sought to tie the attack to the southern border

    • On January 1, a truck rammed into a New Year's celebration along Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing at least 14 and injuring dozens others before the driver was killed in a shootout with police. The truck was rented through the vehicle-sharing app Turo, and was driven to New Orleans from the Houston area. [ABC News, 1/1/25; ABC 13-KTRK, 1/1/25]
    • Fox News initially reported during the 10 a.m. hour that “anonymous sources” claimed that the truck used in the attack had crossed the southern border at Eagle Pass, Texas, two days prior to the attack. Shortly after, Fox senior national correspondent Aishah Hasnie walked back the claim, posting at 11:55 a.m. ET that the truck “crossed Eagle Pass, TX on November 16th -- not two days ago. The identification of driver that crossed border does not appear to be the shooter.” A Fox News article also quietly removed any mention of the border in an article which originally reported that the truck used “was tracked crossing the southern border into the U.S. at Eagle Pass, Texas, in November.” [CNN, 1/2/25; Twitter/X, 1/1/25; Fox News, 1/1/25, archived 1/1/25]
    • President-elect Donald Trump spread Fox News’ faulty reporting by posting the same misinformation minutes after the network reported it. Trump posted to Truth Social: “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.” [Media Matters, 1/2/25] 

  • After Fox walked back its reporting, network figures continued to fearmonger about “potential terrorists” crossing the southern border

    • Fox host Julie Banderas shifted focus to the southern border by claiming that “the license plate on this truck has a history of plate readers at the border in patterns that, and I’m quoting, ‘may be suspicious for human smuggling.’” Banderas added: “When you hear human smuggling, you think about the border, and the border has obviously been such a dangerous, ignored problem for this country with so many of these sleeper cells and terrorists who want to harm Americans, illegally crossing our borders.” [Fox News, Fox News Live, 1/1/25]
    • Fox News national correspondent Griff Jenkins claimed the attack is “raising new concerns about the terror threat across the country, including at our southern border,” before interviewing Trump’s border czar Tom Homan. Jenkins said: “The New Orleans terrorist suspect, a U.S. Army vet carrying an ISIS flag from his truck's trailer hitch, is raising new concerns about the terror threat across the country, including at our southern border — where just months ago, eight Tajikistan nationals with ISIS ties were arrested in several major U.S. cities after entering illegally.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 1/2/25]
    • After reporting that the suspect was a U.S. citizen who drove from Texas, Fox’s Todd Piro asked his guest, “Would you say we are at pre-9/11 threat level specifically because of Joe Biden's border policies — in other words, is there an extensive ISIS threat in our homeland?” His guest, former Trump Homeland Security Deputy Assistant Secretary Jonathan Fahey, responded: “We don't really know what that threat is but I do think Biden's border policies — whether or not it had anything to do with this, where it doesn't seem like it did — but it does create the perception we do not have a secure border and a secure country, and that this administration is more concerned about advancing their political agenda than they are about protecting public safety and national security.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends First, 1/2/25]
    • On Hannity, Homan claimed Biden “bragged” that the New Orleans attacker is a U.S. citizen and said that the border was the “biggest” national security threat. Homan added, “I wouldn't hang his hat on these attacks being done by U.S. citizens. It's coming. Even [FBI Director] Christopher Wray ... said the southern border has the biggest national security vulnerability he's ever seen.” Guest host Tammy Bruce also warned, “Now we have millions of people, we don’t know who they are, hundreds of people — regarding the terrorist watchlist, people who are dangerous, who are roaming about.” [Fox News, Hannity, 1/1/25]
    • Discussing Biden’s remarks about the attack on The Ingraham Angle, guest host Jason Chaffetz said that “it was odd how much emphasis he gave to the fact that he was a United States citizen.” Nathan Sales, a former counterterrorism coordinator under Trump, stated that Biden “almost seemed relieved that the perpetrator was an American citizen because if this guy had actually illegally come to the United States across our southern border, he would have a lot to answer for.” Sales added, “Today, the person who committed this attack was indeed an American citizen, but let’s indeed not take our eyes off the bigger picture here, which is that over the past four years, millions of people have come into the country. We have no accountability for who they are, and we have to take seriously the risk — the threat that some of these people may be here to do us harm.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 1/1/25]
    • During a segment discussing the attack, The Five co-host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery mentioned “hundreds, maybe thousands of people associated with, you know, groups from ISIS-K to Al-Shabaab in this country illegally, potentially gotaways we don't even know about.” Co-host Jessica Tarlov noted that “there are two stories being told about this perpetrator, one that ... this was a home-grown American terrorist" and “then there is another narrative that is being boosted by people who want to make a case about open borders, that this is someone who, you know, flew through Eagle Pass, drove to New Orleans and tried to kill a bunch of people. That's obviously not what happened here.” [Fox News, The Five, 1/2/25]
    • Former acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf accused the Biden administration of not responding to the reported heightened threat environment, “whether it’s along the border, whether it’s vetting more individuals coming in.” Anchor Trace Gallagher added that everyone took FBI Director Christopher Wray’s terror warning seriously “because we had seen this crush of people coming across the border that we did not know.” [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 1/2/25]
    • During a straight news panel discussion about the attack, Fox News contributor and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen declared that Trump “has got to find those people who snuck into our country and deport them.” [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 1/2/25]
    • Fox News contributor Charlie Hurt responded to the New Orleans attack and the Las Vegas explosion by casting suspect on migrants: “What else don't we know? If these are a couple of people who are homegrown, what don't we know of all of these people who’ve come across the border?” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 1/2/25]
    • Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed the New Orleans attack on soft-on-crime and open border policies. Pompeo claimed, “When America fails to lead, when you don't engage in solid law enforcement and enforcing criminal laws, when you can't secure your borders, when you refuse to call out radical Islamic terrorism and punish it, you get the events of October 7, you get the events of just this past week in New Orleans.” Pompeo later fearmongered about migrants crossing the southern border, saying, “We’ve also seen a couple of hundred folks that are on the terror watch list come across our southern border. We don't have any earthly idea where many of these folks are.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 1/2/25]
    • Former Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien complained that “we’ve had a wide-open border for four years” and “hundreds of thousands of gotaways,” claiming that “bad guy central, it’s here in America.” A chyron reading “New Orleans attacker ‘inspired by ISIS’” aired during the segment. [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 1/2/25]
    • On Hannity, guest Brett Tolman mentioned a “porous immigration border” and predicted foreign attackers “will be actually rallied and they’re going to be inspired” by the New Orleans attack. [Fox News, Hannity, 1/2/25]