'This is so bad': Fox News reporter corrects the record after mainstream media outlet calls the open border a 'myth'

Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin rebuked a mainstream media outlet on Tuesday for claiming that it is a "myth" to say the southern border is "open."

What is the background?

On Tuesday, Axios reporter Russell Contreras published a story purportedly debunking the "myth" of a U.S.-Mexico "open border." Contreras claimed conservatives invented the phrase to sink immigration reform in the Obama administration and now use it to pin "false claims" on Democrats.

To back his claim, Contreras asserted that "the southern border is more fortified than it's ever been," citing the number of active Border Patrol agents, the barriers along the border, the fact that immigration authorities detain migrants entering the U.S., that border entry lines are long, and that the Biden administration is building a small stretch of new border wall.

Contreras, moreover, only quoted one person in his story — an immigration expert from the Cato Institute who agreed with his thesis.

What did Melugin say?

The intrepid Fox News reporter, who has extensively covered the border crisis, quickly rebuked Contreras.

"This is so bad," Melugin said of the Axios story.

"You can tell whoever wrote this hasn’t spent much time at the border or hasn’t bothered talking to the agents tasked with patrolling it," he explained. "Ask the 1.6 million + known gotaways how difficult it was to get in w/ chunks of the border unpatrolled while agents process."

Even worse, Melugin highlighted the journalism blunder contained within the Axios story: Contreras apparently did not interview a single person with firsthand knowledge of the border crisis.

"@RussContreras how do you write this ridiculous article without even speaking to anyone from Border Patrol, CBP, or DHS?" Melugin asked. "Your only quote is from the Cato Institute, & you don’t even acknowledge Congressional testimony from Border Patrol leadership that the border is not secure."

Under President Joe Biden's watch, nearly 6 million migrants have entered the U.S., according to data from Customs and Border Protection. There have also been an estimated 1.6 million "gotaways," or migrants who evaded authorities.

Those numbers square with the dictionary definition of "open," which means "not closed." The Axios-declared "myth," it turns out, is itself a myth.

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