Ron DeSantis’ efforts to blame the spread of COVID-19 on migrants lack evidence

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As coronavirus cases increase nationwide, and particularly in Florida, a blame game has erupted between President Joe Biden and Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Florida has the second highest number of coronavirus cases per capita of any state as of August 6, exceeding its level at any time during the pandemic. Florida also has the highest coronavirus hospitalization rate of any state, at more than three times the national average.

Biden pointed this out in remarks on Aug. 3. “Make no mistake about it,” he said. “The escalation of cases is particularly concentrated in states with low vaccination rates. Only two states, Florida and Texas, account for a third of all new COVID-19 cases nationwide. … Listen, we need leadership from everyone. And if some governors are unwilling to do the right thing to beat this pandemic, then they should allow companies and universities that want to do the right thing to be able to do it. “

DeSantis unloaded on Biden during a press conference on August 4 in Panama City, Florida.

“It imported more viruses from all over the world by having a wide open southern border. You have hundreds of thousands of people flocking in every month,” DeSantis said. “You have over 100 different countries that people flock to. Not only do they let them pass, but they then cultivate them in all of our communities across this country. Put them on planes, put them on buses.”

DeSantis doubled down in a fundraising letter later today: “Joe Biden has the nerve to tell me to get away from COVID as he lets COVID infected migrants cross our southern border in the hundreds of thousands No elected official is doing more to allow the transmission of COVID in America than Joe Biden with his policies of open borders. “

Public health experts have said it is reasonable to be concerned about the spread of the coronavirus among migrants, especially if they live in nearby neighborhoods. “It would be fair to say that detention centers, like prisons, are likely to be transmission ‘hot spots’,” said Babak Javid, professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco. “We saw a lot of this last year,” earlier in the pandemic.

But they said there was no evidence that this was happening on the scale DeSantis described.

It may well be that immigrants entering the country illegally are contributing to the number of COVID-19 cases, “but given the widespread transmission already in the United States, the contribution of immigration is akin to paying a bucket of water in a swimming pool, ”said William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University. “It is difficult to measure and quite trivial.”

The US-Mexico border is not wide open

In a statement, DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw focused on migrants crossing the border undetected. She acknowledged that migration is not the only factor in the spread of COVID-19.

“We know that tens of thousands of migrants cross the border illegally every month,” she said. “Officials do not have a precise number because the border is porous, and it goes without saying that many people enter undetected. … Some of these countries where a large part of the migrants originate, such as Haiti, have extremely low rates of COVID vaccination. “

Yet it is wrong to say, as DeSantis did, that the southern border is “wide open” for everyone to simply enter the country. Most of those encountered are turned away under a public health law invoked by the Trump administration and sued by Biden.

Border officials at and between ports of entry recorded more than 822,000 encounters with migrants from February to June, and most of these people were deported under the Public Health Act. These people cannot stay in the country to seek asylum or other immigration protection.

Nicole Hallett, professor and director of the Immigrants Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School, told PolitiFact that the number of apprehensions reflects the fact that people try and fail to cross multiple times.

“Apprehensions have increased because of the strict COVID restrictions, not because the restrictions have eased,” Hallett said.

The Biden administration has allowed certain groups of migrants to seek immigration protection, such as children arriving alone at the southern border and some families with young children. The Homeland Security Department, however, said it had recently resumed expedited return flights for some families recently arrived at the southern border.

In February, authorities began letting in asylum seekers who were awaiting resolution of their U.S. immigration cases in Mexico as part of the Trump-era Remain program in Mexico. (Biden ended this program in June.)

The United States is also temporarily restricting inbound land border crossings from Mexico; non-essential travel is not permitted.

Customs and border protection told PolitiFact in April that staff were performing initial inspections to detect symptoms or risk factors associated with COVID-19 and consulting with on-site medical staff, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of United States or local health systems, as applicable.

DHS also said in April that it was working with state and local authorities and non-governmental organizations to ensure all migrants are tested for COVID-19 “at some point in their immigration journey.”

This does not mean that the risk of the coronavirus spreading at the border is zero. For example, McAllen, Texas, along the border with Mexico, has seen increasing numbers of migrants arrive in recent weeks. According to the city, more than 7,000 migrants have tested positive for the coronavirus, out of 87,000 migrants who had passed through the city.

But drawing a clear line between migrants and the spread of the coronavirus across the United States, as DeSantis has done, requires knowing how many migrants escape detection and how many of them are infected.

“Otherwise, this is a statement with no facts to justify it,” said Nicole Gatto, associate professor in the School of Community and Global Health at Claremont Graduate University.

The current wave is due to community spread

Data on coronavirus cases provide weak support for the idea that the virus is spread through illegal immigration.

Significant epidemics are occurring well inland from the border, in states like Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky and Missouri. Public health experts express skepticism that illegal border crossings are to blame for these outbreaks.

(This map, by The Washington Post, shows the seven-day average of reported cases for each U.S. county, per 100,000 population. Reprinted with permission; updated versions available here.)

If DeSantis were right, the land border between the United States and Mexico would be one of the hardest-hit areas in the country, because even if migrants ended up dispersing to other places, they would first have a impact on coronavirus rates locally.

However, the entire land border between San Diego and the southern tip of Texas has relatively low case rates compared to the entire southeastern quadrant of the United States.

Given this data, “it doesn’t seem fair that illegal immigration is driving the current wave,” said Javid, a professor at the University of California-San Francisco.

There is also a more plausible explanation for the current pattern of coronavirus outbreaks: Case rates are higher in places with lower vaccination rates.

A New York Times analysis found that at the end of July, counties with vaccination rates below 30% had coronavirus case rates well over double the case rates in counties with at least 60% of vaccination. And five of the six least-vaccinated states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi are all squarely in the geographic quadrant of the country with the highest case rates.

Some of the hardest-hit places, like southwestern Missouri, are far from the border, while others, like southern Louisiana, are on the water.

“The pattern of distribution of coronavirus cases in no way matches the movement of immigrants,” said Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at the Grossman School of Medicine at New York University. “And the paths to bring COVID here are many, including tourists, diplomats, boat workers, student exchanges, and cruises.”

Caplan said he viewed DeSantis’ statements as the latest in a long history of efforts to blame infectious diseases on immigrants.

“The notion of immigrants carrying diseases has been mentioned in connection with Gypsies, Jews, Italians, Irish and blacks,” he said. “As we know from Ebola, SARS and the flu, infections happen all the time. The problem is what do we do to stop their spread.”

Our decision

DeSantis said Biden was behind the current wave of coronavirus because he “imported more viruses from around the world by having a wide open southern border.”

Available evidence shows that coronavirus hotspots tend to be clustered far from the border or on the water, while the entire land border with Mexico has fairly low rates. Hotspot locations tend to correlate with low vaccination rates among the public.

In addition, the United States does not have a “wide open” border. Most of the people we meet are turned away under a Trump-era policy that Biden pursued.

We evaluate the statement as false.

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