As the migrants fled violence-wracked homelands and travelled through Mexico towards the United States the fictions grew wilder.
They were would-be invaders. A dangerous horde bent on violating US law. Pawns of a liberal conspiracy. Living proof of the need to build a wall.
The caravan of asylum seekers from central America kept heading north, too busy seeking food, shelter and safety to rebut the accusations by Donald Trump and his conservative allies.
On Monday, however, about 150 camped at the border, some close enough to touch California, and resolved to expose the latest fiction, the one designed to keep them out.
“We have reached capacity at the San Ysidro port of entry,” Kevin McAleenan, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a branch of Homeland Security, said in a statement on Sunday. The agency lacked “sufficient space and resources” to process “persons travelling without appropriate entry documentation”.
The US, in other words, was not violating US and international law by refusing to process asylum seekers. It simply lacked the capacity.
Put another way: despite weeks of warning about the caravan’s approach, this gateway between Tijuana and San Diego, one of the world’s busiest border crossings, was for approximately 24 hours able to process precisely zero asylum claims.