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President Trump just tweeted this:

Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws!

My question is, is it true that there are Middle Easterners in the migrant caravan headed to the U.S.?

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    Comments are for improving posts, not sharing your political opinions.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Oct 23, 2018 at 22:17

2 Answers 2

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There is no evidence to support this claim so far. The timeline has been:

  1. 11-Oct-2018: Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales claims he has detained "around 100" Middle Eastern terrorists, including ISIS, but not specifying a time frame. No evidence has been shown of any of this.
  2. 16-Oct-2018: The caravan starts in Honduras, gathering people as it goes.
  3. 18-Oct-2018: Conservative action group, Judicial Watch, combines the two stories, posting a headline of: "100 ISIS Terrorists Caught in Guatemala as Central American Caravan Heads to US". While the article itself is just a big what-if, several far-right sites apparently only read the headline.
  4. 19-Oct-2018: The Gateway Pundit, a far-right blog, pushes the danger even further.
  5. 20-Oct-2018: A blogger game of telephone over the weekend turns the question into a statement. There ARE Middle-Easterners actually IN this caravan. It enters Fox's orbit with Lou Dobbs' comments.
  6. 22-Oct-2018: The 6am edition of Fox and Friends are full-on confirming that these things definitely overlap. By 8am, Trump is tweeting it as if it's fact.
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  • 1
    Comments are for improving posts, not sharing your political opinions.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Oct 23, 2018 at 22:17
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    JW is not far right. It's center right. However GP isn't far-right either. It's just incendiary and not credible.
    – user36356
    Oct 24, 2018 at 20:16
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    those american style dates eye twitch
    – Federico
    Oct 25, 2018 at 10:21
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On October 24, 2018, CNN's Chief White House Correspondent, Jim Acosta (@Acosta) tweeted President Trump had denied having strong evidence for the claim:

On whether there are middle easterners in caravan, I asked: "there's no proof?" Trump responded: "There's no proof of anything" - Twitter

His colleague, Geoff Bennett @GeoffRBennett, quotes further:

NEWS: Trump -- when pressed repeatedly by @acosta for evidence to support his claim of "Middle Easterners" in the migrant caravan -- says: "There's no proof of anything, but there could very well be." - Twitter

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    CNN has an article that goes a bit more into depth. Trumps statements regarding the issue were eg "there's no proof of anything", "They could very well be", "I have very good information", "There's no proof of anything but they could very well be", "they don't necessarily have to be in that group. But certainly, you have a lot of people coming up through the southern border, from the Middle East and other places that are not appropriate for our country"
    – tim ♦
    Oct 24, 2018 at 7:45

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