Ask PolitiFact: Is Texas measles outbreak linked to 'border'? No evidence, officials say

Amid an outbreak of the highly contagious measles virus in West Texas, some on social media sought to blame former President Joe Biden’s border policies.

A Feb. 26 Threads post said, "Update: Plandemic 2.0 - Mainstream Media pushes fear campaign about measles in Texas, hoping to push more people to get vaccinated and try to make RFK Jr look bad, although this disease was allowed to enter due to Biden’s open borders!!"

The post, which referenced President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

Measles is an airborne viral disease that can cause serious complications, including a rash with visible flat, red spots on a person’s body. It is mostly preventable by vaccine. Two doses of the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccine are 97% effective against measles, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

We found other social media posts blaming Biden’s border policies for the measles outbreak in Texas’ South Plains region. 

But there’s no evidence that an influx of immigrants is behind the measles outbreak, the source of which is unknown, Texas health officials said.

There were historically high levels of immigration during Biden’s term. About 4.3 million people were released into the U.S. to await immigration court hearings from February 2021 to November 2024, per Department of Homeland Security data. That included children who traveled without parents and people who scheduled appointments at official ports of entry and were given humanitarian parole, a temporary legal status to live and work in the U.S.

As of March 7, the Texas Department of State Health Services had reported 198 measles cases, including 23 patients hospitalized and the death of a child. 

At a March 3 state House of Representatives health committee hearing, state Rep. Mike Olcott, R-Fort Worth, asked Dr. Jennifer Shuford, Texas’ Health Services commissioner, if an increase in "foreign nationals" could be the source of the outbreak.

Shuford said international travel is a common source of measles outbreaks, but in this one, the source is not evident.

"For this particular outbreak, we don’t know the individual who introduced it into the community or what the risk factor was for bringing it in," Shuford said. "We know that measles is alive and well in other parts of the world, and so all it takes is one traveler to bring it in."

Olcott pressed Shuford further on the topic, asking if it’s possible the outbreak wouldn’t have happened had there not been a surge in migrants across the southern border.

Shuford said she couldn’t "pin it on this" and brought up past examples of how international travel has led to measles outbreaks in undervaccinated communities, citing a 2018-19 outbreak in a New York Orthodox Jewish community that began with someone who had traveled to Israel.

"I don’t have any data that would say yes or no to this outbreak," about immigrants, Shuford said, noting vaccination rates had been falling in the area for a while and it was "ready for an outbreak."

"Whether that introduction came from travelers there or travelers from other places, I don’t have any data to say," Shuford said.

Eighty of the Texas cases were among people who had not been vaccinated against measles. Five others had at least one dose of the vaccine and the vaccination status of 113 others was unknown, the state said.

The bulk of the outbreak’s cases, 137 (69%), were reported in rural Gaines County, where measles vaccination coverage is lower than the 95% rate health experts say is necessary for herd immunity.

Unrelated to the West Texas outbreak, the state reported four cases in Harris, Rockwall and Travis counties that involved people who had traveled internationally.

Texas health data shows that in Gaines County’s largest school district, Seminole, about 82% of kindergarten students were vaccinated for measles in the 2023-24 school year. In Gaines County, 17% of its kindergarten students filed for vaccine exemptions.

Gaines County also has a large Mennonite community, which Texas Department of State Health Services spokesperson Lara Anton has previously described to the Associated Press as "undervaccinated," although she said the church wasn’t to blame for that. Mennonites are part of the Anabaptist family of Christian churches and there are about 40 different Mennonite groups in the U.S.

A pastor at Seminole’s Mennonite Evangelical Church told the Houston Chronicle that it’s a "misconception" that all Mennonites aren’t vaccinated, and that church doctrine doesn’t oppose vaccination.

Anton told PolitiFact that the first Texas cases in the outbreak were in residents who had not traveled internationally and it’s unknown how they were exposed. The department doesn’t collect a person’s citizenship status during disease investigations, she said.

The source of the outbreak may never be known, she said.

"We probably won’t ever know due to how the virus spreads and how contagious it is," Anton said.

People with measles are contagious for four days before showing symptoms and the virus can linger in the air for two hours after an infected person leaves a room, Anton said: "It is entirely possible that the person who exposed the first Texas case to measles wasn’t ever in the same room at the same time as the first case reported to public health."

There have been past measles outbreaks involving migrants. In March 2024, nearly 60 migrants at a temporary shelter in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood tested positive for the virus.

Texas isn’t the only state reporting measles cases, though it has the most. The CDC reported 222 cases nationally in 12 jurisdictions as of March 6.

New Mexico has reported 30 measles cases as of March 7, including the death of an unvaccinated person in Lea County, which is across the Texas border from Gaines County.

PolitiFact Staff Writer Maria Ramirez Uribe contributed to this fact-check.

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