US conservatives baselessly tie New Orleans attacker to illegal immigration

"New Orleans terrorist attacker is said to have come across the border in Eagle Pass TWO DAYS AGO!!! Shut the border down!!!" says a January 1, 2025 post on X from Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

The post from Greene includes a snippet from Fox News reporting: "This person came through Eagle Pass, Texas two days ago."

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Screenshot from X taken January 2, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump similarly suggested the attack validated his past claims that gang members and terrorists stream freely over the border.

"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," Trump began his January 1 post on Truth Social.

Several other prominent conservatives joined the chorus, citing Fox News' reporting to falsely suggest the attacker had entered the country illegally as investigators worked to piece together who the man was and how he rammed a Ford F-150 pickup through a crowd on the iconic Bourbon Street during the early morning hours of January 1, killing 14 victims and injuring more than 30.

"Now we're learning the terrorist came through the open southern border at Eagle Pass, Texas per Fox News," conservative commentator David J Harris Jr said in one such Facebook post.

"More blood on Biden and Kamala's hands!" he added, in reference to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

But Fox News soon walked back the reporting at the center of the immigration claims.

The truck that the attacker used had previously crossed the border, but that was in November 2024 with another person driving it, the network clarified.

The vehicle was rented using the Turo car-sharing app, the company acknowledged.

The FBI later identified the New Orleans suspect as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, saying in a January 1, 2025 statement that he was a US citizen from Texas who had a flag for the jihadist group Islamic State in the vehicle (archived here).

In a January 2 press conference, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia said the agency believes Jabbar rented the vehicle on December 30, 2024 in Houston, Texas, and drove it to New Orleans the following day (archived here).

Raia said Jabbar is a military veteran who had proclaimed his support for ISIS and is believed to have acted alone.

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick confirmed on X that Jabbar had been living in the Houston area and had been driving the rented truck in Houston before traveling to New Orleans (archived here).

Houston is located some 330 miles (540 kilometers) from the Eagle Pass border crossing with Mexico.

Early misreporting

By the time the FBI identified Jabbar as a US citizen less than 12 hours after the attack, the false narrative about him entering the country illegally had already taken off online -- fueled by early misreporting, as media outlets scrambled to gather information about the suspect and his motive.

Fox News said during a morning broadcast that "federal sources" told its reporters that "this person came through Eagle Pass, Texas two days ago."

The network's journalists repeatedly told viewers in the hours that followed that the truck the suspect drove -- though not necessarily the suspect himself -- was tracked crossing the border in Eagle Pass two days prior to the New Orleans attack, according to AFP's review of the network's broadcasts.

But within two hours, the network had fully amended its reporting.

"Sources now tell Fox that that truck from Eagle Pass, Texas, did not cross two days ago," it reported. "It crossed on November 16. And the identification of the driver that crossed the border does not appear to be the shooter."

More on-air corrections followed, and an editor's note was tacked onto the network's live blog online saying the error was due to confusion on the sources' end (archived here). 

Online, however, the anti-immigrant narrative had spun out of control.

Trump posted about "criminals coming in" just eight minutes after the network's first mention of Eagle Pass. Not 30 minutes later, Greene called for a border shutdown.

Donald Trump Jr, the president-elect's eldest child, also amplified a post saying, "the New Orleans attack suspect came through Eagle Pass, Texas two days ago."

"Biden's parting gift to America -- migrant terrorists," he wrote.

The president-elect then doubled down on January 2, again linking the truck-ramming incident to the border in a post on Truth Social.

Research in Texas and from the Migration Policy Institute has found that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than the US-born population (archived here and here).

AFP contacted Fox News for additional comment, but no response was forthcoming.

AFP has debunked other misinformation about immigration here.