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An Arizona-based immigrant shelter for asylum-seekers claims it has faced threats stemming from conspiratorial claims pushed by right-wing provocateur James O’Keefe and promoted by GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake.
The International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian organization that runs a migrant shelter in Phoenix known as the Welcome Center, told The Arizona Republic it has seen “increased threats to our staff” after right-wingers O’Keefe, Lake and Elon Musk helped fuel conspiracy theories about its operation.
You may remember O’Keefe as the former head of conservative media group Project Veritas, which used dubious video editing and shady editorial tactics in an effort to depict media organizations and left-wing groups making controversial or otherwise unflattering statements. He was axed in 2023 amid allegations of workplace mistreatment and claims that he spent donor funds on “personal luxuries.” He has continued his work independently.
Most recently, O'Keefe released a video to his more than 2 million followers on X (formerly Twitter) falsely alleging he’d “exposed” a “secret migrant center” operating in Phoenix, which O’Keefe claimed is “bussing thousands of migrant ‘refugees’ every hour on the hour” to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport.
The reality is the center isn’t operating in secret at all. The Arizona Republic reported on the center in a feature last year, in which officials from the center, asylum-seekers who were staying there and even a rep for Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., touted its success.
Musk and Lake responded to the video online by pushing anti-immigrant rhetoric and suggesting money spent there is misused taxpayer funds.
Musk expressed shock at O’Keefe’s claim that the IRC received a $415 million government contract (a particularly rich reaction coming from Musk, whose companies have been known to rack up billions of dollars in government contracts in a single year).
Lake responded to O’Keefe’s video with bigoted claims, popular among conservatives, that migrant arrivals constitute an “invasion” of the U.S. “Every time I fly out of the Phoenix Airport (which is often) there are busses unloading illegals who pour into the airport & fill planes headed to cities all across the country,” Lake posted on social media. "This is what an invasion looks like." (Lake can't have seen many actual invasions if this is what she thinks one looks like.)
Nonetheless, right-wingers like Lake have pushed the invasion claims and portrayed migrants seeking better lives in the U.S. as malicious ne’er-do-wells with a penchant for crime. All the while, in recent years, centers that house migrants have become scapegoats for conservative conspiracy theorists who want to express their anti-immigrant bigotry — the Welcome Center in Arizona is just the latest example.