The Caravan Returns Before the Election. Greene Says Why.
In June 2024, I wrote that Americans would soon hear about another “invading caravan” heading north. I asked why caravans become such urgent political news as elections approach. I also raised a theory about who might be paying to organize them. That was a question, not something I could prove.
Now, with another November election approaching, the caravan story has returned. The Department of Homeland Security has responded publicly to a report of a group heading north from Honduras. Former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene noticed the timing. “We have not seen a caravan headed to the U.S. southern border in several years; why now?” she wrote. Her answer was that an election is coming and Republicans need to scare people into voting.
That is a remarkable thing to hear from someone who was once one of Trump’s strongest allies. Greene is offering her judgment about her former party’s campaign tactics. Her statement does not prove who organized the migrants or paid for their journey. It does tell us that she, too, recognizes the political value Republicans place on a caravan story before an election.
We can check what happened the last time this became a major midterm campaign issue. In October 2018, Trump called the caravan a “Great Midterm issue for Republicans!” Media Matters measured more than 33 hours of Fox News coverage through Election Day. The next day, Fox aired no discussion focused on the caravan. In the eight days after the election, caravan mentions in the print news sections of The New York Times and The Washington Post fell by about 54 percent compared with the eight days before it. The migrants had not disappeared; the attention had.
So I still ask: Why does a group of people hundreds of miles away become an “invasion” in the weeks before Americans vote? Who chooses that word, repeats it, and benefits when voters are frightened? Migrants have their own reasons for leaving home. Politicians are responsible for how they use those journeys in a campaign.
I asked readers to examine that pattern in 2024. In 2026, Greene is asking much the same question—and answering it herself. Perhaps people who dismissed the warning when it came from a brown man will hear it when a white woman who once stood with Trump says it.
