We came across the following post on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter:
The post claims that ‘the Biden administration welded open the Trump border wall in Tucson, AZ (Arizona)’. ‘It’s not a crisis. It’s by design’, the post adds. The ‘crisis’ refers to in the post appears to be a descriptor for the situation at the southern border of the US, where a record number of families crossed illegally in August.
The author of the post appears to suggest that the large number of illegal migrant arrivals were ‘by design’—the result of the Biden administraton intentionally leaving open the gates in the border wall. The post had accumulated over 6.5 million views at the time of writing.
A section of the video showed the individual taking the video gesturing towards the latch in the opened gate, which had been welded such that it could not be lifted to close the gate.
The post was later shared by Republican senator Ted Cruz, further amplifying its reach. Cruz added the hashtag #BidenBorderCrisis, suggesting his agreement that the President was responsible for the migrant inflow.
Dredging Up Old News
When we did a keyword search to verify the claims in the post, we found sources that confirmed the gates had been opened and that migrants were entering through them. An article on the New York Post, for instance, detailed that 114 gates had been welded open along the Arizona border. It also reported witnessing people smugglers driving migrants to the gates, where the migrants would walk through and give themselves up to border security agents. According to the Post, an average of 1,400 migrants were entering through the gates daily.
It must be noted that the New York Post has been found to have a conservative bias with sensationalised reporting, as well as a mixed factcheck record, but its claims appear to backed up by the images in its article of what appear to be migrants entering through the open gates.
A historical web search, however, revealed that the purpose of opening the gates was not to let migrants through, but to allow flood waters and debris to pass through. A Washington Post article revealed that under the presidency of Donald Trump, the border gates, which he had campaigned heavily on building to keep out migrants, were being raised every year to prevent flash floods from knocking them over during the monsoon season. The same article noted that smugglers and migrants could enter through the open gates.
The threat posed by floodwaters to border constructions has also been longstanding. Tech site Gizmodo published images of a section of Trump’s border wall where the gates had been blown off their hinges by flooding, while an article in the Arizona Daily Star (tucson.com) from as far back as 2011 showed a section of mesh wire border fence that had been felled by debris.
Tracing the X/Twitter post back to the original creator of the video, we found that it had been filmed by Ali Bradley, a journalist for the news network News Nation. Bradley had reported in a X/Twitter thread about the open gates, stating that while the gates open every year, ‘the cartel (was) taking advantage of the sector right now’ by transporting migrants to the border.
Bradley later relays a statement from the US Border Patrol following the report, stating,
‘CBP (US Customs and Border Protection) has opened stormwater drainage gates to ensure proper drainage and minimising potentional impacts to the infrastructure. These gates prevent flooding and subsequent environmental, infrastructure and community damage in various areas during the monsoon season in Southern Arizona.
‘A compromise in the integrity of the barrier can lead to extensive damage making the gate, or even the infrastructure unstable. When gates become damaged, they need to be secured open to prevent additional damage which can prolong the gap in the infrastructure. The unregulated flow of water can also undermine the integrity of the border disrupting agents and emergency services ability to respond to illegal entries, smuggling and other criminal activity, or persons in distress.’
The floodgates in the border wall were therefore opened by border patrol to prevent flooding, which could hinder border patrol activity and damage the border wall. While migrants have entered through the open floodgates, it is false that the gates were opened by the Biden administration to allow migrants through. The story was also factchecked by Reuters Fact Check, which found the opening of the Arizona border floodgates ‘predates (the) Biden administration’.
