(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) TikTok users have been assisting immigrants coming across the southern border by making it appear easy to do illegally.
According to Newsbusters, many of the videos make it appear as if people can cross the border without visas with no issue.
“Think about it: if you are trying to leave Venezuela in the state that this country is in and you see a video telling you visas are going to be given out,” said Adriana Rivera of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, commenting on a video.
“If you’re desperate, and these people are desperate, what are you going to do, what are you going to think? It’s just bad all around. ”
Other videos offer ideas to undocumented migrants, such as cheating the system or harming Border Patrol agents. One TikTok user posted a video of immigrants standing on each other’s shoulders to create a ladder over the border wall.
Another video shows a broken gate where migrants can simply open the door and walk through. A third video showed illegal aliens fighting U.S. border agents after crossing the Rio Grande River illegally.
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All of these videos have garnered millions of views and likes, as TikTok’s algorithm pushed the videos across the pages of hundreds of thousands of users.
This fiscal year, there have been more than 2.2 million illegal migrant encounters—up more than 200,000 than last year, according to Kxan.
Allen Orr, the former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said in an interview that the videos are in bad taste.
“It happens over and over again in these countries that have a lot of internal turmoil and that have constant migration to the southern border,” Orr said.
“I think these videos add to the desperation of the economic affairs around the world and the desperation that people have to come here,” he continued.
