As COVID-19 cases continue to rise across much of the south, some Republicans, including former Olympian and reality TV personality Caitlyn Jenner, are blaming the latest surge on large numbers of migrants crossing the southern border.
Public health experts, however, say there's little evidence to back that theory up and that Republicans are just scapegoating immigrants.
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Jenner, who is running for governor in California, mentioned the migrant theory when she tweeted in support of a looming recall election that could remove Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom from office.
She responded to a tweet that encouraged others to "Vote No on the recall," by saying, "Why? Do you want more unemployment? More from? More illegal immigration bringing COVID? Schools closed? BS! Forget #GavinNewsom."
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also placed blame on migrants, and the Biden administration's lax border policies, for the COVID surge.
They're "allowing free pass into the United States of people with a high probability of COVID, and then spreading that COVID in our communities," Abbott said in an interview on Fox News.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has also accused Biden of "helping to facilitate" the spread of the coronavirus.
"He's imported more virus from around the world by having a wide-open southern border. You have hundreds of thousands of people pouring across every month," DeSantis said during a news conference. "Do you think they're worried about COVID for that? Of course not. So he's facilitating... who knows what new variants are out there? But I can tell you whatever variants are around the world, they're coming across that southern border. And so he's not shutting down the virus, he's helping to facilitate it in our country."
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Public health experts say the main culprits driving the rising infections in the U.S. are people who refuse to get vaccinated and follow CDC guidance, not migrants. Most migrants who are allowed to enter the country are tested for COVID-19 and given hotel rooms to quarantine if they test positive, the Associated Press reported.
Dr. Ivan Melendez, who serves as the local health authority in Hidalgo County, Texas, said migrants do they have higher infection rates compared with the general population.
"The positivity rate in the migrants that are coming in [is] almost exactly as the positivity rates here," Melendez said at a news conference. "Is this a pandemic of the migrants? No, it's a pandemic of the unvaccinated."
Dr. Joseph McCormick, a physician and former CDC epidemiologist, told the AP that the number of arriving migrants is far too small to be driving the enormous increases in COVID cases.
"Given what we are seeing now across the country, it just doesn’t work to try to attribute that to migrants," he said.
Natalia Molina, professor in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, said there's a long history of scapegoating immigrants in the U.S.
"This is a pattern we've seen for 150 years of medical scapegoating, of medical racism, in which we blame the disease outbreaks on immigrants, in place of really looking at other factors, our own behaviors," Molina said in an interview with NPR. "As infection rates go up, as death rates go up, the scapegoating will go up."
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