Shamsud-Din JabbarThe 42-year-old suspected driver in the New Orleans New Orleans car crash was a United States citizen and former US Army veteran.
But just hours after the attack – which killed 15 people and is being investigated as a terrorist attack – President-elect Donald Trump, Republican leaders and civil rights activists said Jabbar had entered the US illegally.
Citing Fox News, social media accounts on January 1 said Jabbar “crossed the US-Mexico border at Eagle Pass two days ago” and that “there is blood on the hands of the Biden administration”.
US Representative for Georgia Marjorie Taylor Greene shared the 38-second video of Fox News and wrote on X that Jabbari “is said to have crossed the border in Mngungu Pass TWO DAYS AGO!!! Close the border!!! “
New Orleans terrorists reportedly crossed the border at Eagle Pass TWO DAYS AGO!!!
Close the border!!!
Who has our government detonated the bomb that is taking out innocent Americans?
– Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) January 1, 2025
Donald Trump Jr said on X that Biden's “parting gift” to the US was “terrorist immigrants”.
Biden's parting gift to America – immigration criminals. https://t.co/PQBr8A6KDt
– Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 1, 2025
The president-elect explained the attack on Truth Social on the morning of January 1, I write that “the terrorists that are coming are worse than the terrorists that we have in our country”.
Around 3 a.m. in New Orleans on New Year's Day, law enforcement officials say Jabbar plowed into a crowd on Bourbon Street in a rented Ford F-150 before being killed in a shootout with police.
At least one Fox News story on January 1 reported that the vehicle had crossed the southern US border two days earlier and was driven by Jabbar, citing “federal sources”.
Journalists returned this within a few minutes on air. The network corrected it within an hour saying the car entered the country in mid-November and was not driven by Jabbar.
But it was too late for me to falsely write that Jabbar was in the US illegally. PolitiFact contacted Fox News but did not hear back from the publication.
This is how false information about the suspect spread.
Fox News' current record
While officials are working to confirm the attack, Fox News reported that the pickup truck that Jabbar rented came into the US at Eagle Pass, Texas, across the border.
At 10:40am ET (15:40 GMT) on January 1, a Fox News reporter said authorities had warrants placing the suspect and the vehicle at the southern border days before.
“According to government sources, the suspect was driving a vehicle with a Texas license plate – well, this is just coming into our newsroom, this is from Griff Jenkins and David Spunt doing their federal work on this case, the suspect was driving the vehicle with a Texas license plate across Bourbon Street. According to their sources, to Spunt and Jenkins, this person came to Eagle Pass, Texas, two days ago.”
At around 10:47am ET (15:47 GMT), Fox News reporter David Spunt reported that reporters did not know if Jabbar was driving the car.
“We hear that the car was coming from Mexico to the United States in Eagle Pass, Texas, two days ago. To be clear, we do not know 100 percent that this person, and we know that the suspect is a man, was the one who drove the car across the border. That's not clear at this point,” Spunt said.
“We only know that the actual license was taken by a reader while crossing the border. This is what two law enforcement agencies have at Fox News – that it was taken across the border in Eagle Pass, Texas, two days ago. I know it raises more questions than answers but we are providing information to viewers. the way we get it, the more accurate it is, the more we know at this point.”
Trump posted his Truth Social message about “terrorists coming” at 10:48am ET (15:48 GMT).
At 11:55am ET (16:55 GMT), Fox News fixed the time on air, stating that the vehicle crossed the border in mid-November and confirming that it was not driven by Jabbar.
“Our sources are now telling Fox that the car from Eagle Pass, Texas, did not cross two days ago. It crossed on November 16, and the identity of the driver who crossed the border does not appear to be the shooter,” said Fox News correspondent Bryan Llenas.
PolitiFact found no instances of Fox News on air repeating the original erroneous report in subsequent episodes throughout the day.
Despite Fox's corrections, many of the wrong articles remain online unexplained.
Trump continued to show the wrong approach to immigration True Social post on January 2, long after police had confirmed that Jabbar was a US citizen.
“With Biden's 'Open Border's Policy' I have said, many times at meetings, and elsewhere, that Radical Islamic Terrorism, and other forms of violence, will be so terrible in America that it will be hard to imagine or believe,” Trump wrote. “That time has come, worse than we thought.”
At a press conference on January 2, Christopher Raia, deputy director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, said Jabbar boarded an F-150 in Houston on December 30 and flew to New Orleans on the evening of December 31.