Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) accused the Biden administration of having “legalized human trafficking of millions” in a new post on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday.
“The Biden admin has created the most dangerous national security crisis in history. They’ve legalized human trafficking of millions, allowed 1.8 million gotaways, and are harboring illegals at the taxpayer’s expense! Treasonous! Impeach Mayorkas!” Greene wrote.
Greene attached a video from NewsNation journalist Ali Bradley depicting a number of migrants walking to a border crossing in Lukeville, Arizona. Bradley’s original tweet said that over 66,000 migrants had entered through the Lukeville crossing.
The phrase “human trafficking” has often popped up in Republicans’ arguments against President Joe Biden’s immigration policies. Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn has made similar claims, accusing the administration of encouraging the practice by “Mexico’s vicious and evil cartels.”
“Biden’s open border policies have not only encouraged human trafficking; they’ve made it into a booming business for these criminal organizations. Among the cartels, Biden’s approval rating is soaring,” Blackburn wrote in April, citing a March 2021 New York Post article. When the Post article had published, Biden had only been in office two months.
The State Department’s 2023 report on human trafficking shows that while there are over 27 million victims in the U.S., only 79 victims were reported to come from Mexico.
Human trafficking, the State Department points out, is often confused with “migrant smuggling.” Human trafficking involves “the exploitation of an individual for the purposes of compelled labor or a commercial sex act through the use of force, fraud, or coercion,” according to the State Department. Migrant smuggling, on the other hand, is when a person finds a smuggler who agrees to transport them across the border into another country. While both are illegal, migrant smuggling requires consent.
However, the phrase “human trafficking” may have an added weight to Greene’s supporters. Greene herself has been a proponent of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which claims, in part, that a cabal of powerful, left-leaning elites have been trafficking and sexually abusing children.
Greene says she no longer believes in QAnon, and blamed “the internet” for her beliefs, according to Rolling Stone. However, she said in 2021 that “she had a lot of constituents that are QAnon,” according to former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.