Manufactured Enemies: How the Border and Trans People Became the 2026 Election's Favorite Scapegoats

Every election needs a villain. The question is whether the villain is real.

In the final weeks of the 2026 midterms, two groups have been cast in that role: transgender children and immigrants. The stories being told about both are politically useful precisely because they are frightening — and in significant part, they are false. This is not an argument about policy differences. It is an argument about a political strategy that runs on manufactured fear, and what that strategy reveals about the people using it.

The "Forced Transition" Story Is a Lie With a Fact-Check Paper Trail

Across competitive Senate races this fall, Republican groups have run ads accusing Democratic candidates of supporting "sex-change surgeries for minors." On October 8, CNN published a fact check of the ads airing in Ohio, Texas, Iowa, and South Carolina and found them deceptive.

In Ohio, ads attacking Sherrod Brown feature a woman who says she received hormone injections and surgery "without my parents' consent" as "a kid." By her own account, she was 19 when she had the surgery — a legal adult, for whom parental consent is not required.

In Texas, ads claim James Talarico voted to fund surgeries for minors. He voted against a bill that would have banned not only surgeries but also hormone therapy and puberty blockers — and had supported amendments to keep the surgery ban while preserving access to other care. He says he opposes surgeries for minors.

In Iowa, an ad claims Josh Turek voted to spend public money on surgeries for minors, citing a 2025 health care vote that was not about gender surgeries, which were already illegal in Iowa at the time.

In South Carolina, an ad displays what looks like a newspaper headline reading "Annie Andrews: Trans the Kids." It is an artificial image; the supposed article text is gibberish.

Behind the ads sits a bigger lie: the claim that public schools are "forcing" children to transition. No public school in America performs gender surgeries. Gender-affirming medical care for minors, where it is legal at all, requires parental consent and a clinical process; major U.S. medical organizations describe social transition at school as matters like using a name and pronouns. The tiny percentage of minors who do receive surgery are overwhelmingly 15 to 17, and the procedures are almost entirely chest operations — a fact CNN noted from the available data. The leap from "a teacher used a different name" to "children are being forced to transition" is not a policy argument. It is a horror story written for a campaign.

When a lie works at the ballot box, it does not retire after the election. It becomes governance. Candidates who win on "the schools are mutilating your children" arrive in office owing policy to the lie — which is how a country ends up with states investigating families, banning care even for adults, and deputizing teachers as informants.

"Open Border": A Phrase That Has Never Described Any Policy

The second manufactured enemy needs no fact check so much as a definition. The phrase "open border" suggests a policy under which anyone may enter and remain without restriction. No administration of either party — not this one, not the last, not any in modern American history — has had such a policy.

The reality runs the other way. The Biden administration expelled most arrivals under pandemic-era authority, then in 2024 imposed some of the strictest asylum restrictions in decades. The Trump administration has pursued the largest deportation campaign in modern history. Border crossings rose to record highs during a period of restrictive enforcement and fell to historic lows under the current one — neither fact describes an "open" border. Every administration expels, detains, deports, and turns people away. The border has never been open.

"Open border" survives because it is not a description. It is a feeling — engineered to make voters feel invaded. As a talking point it has one job: convert a complicated policy subject into a threat you can vote against.

The Enforcement Is Real, and It Is Landing on Citizens

Here the manufactured story meets a genuinely dangerous policy.

ICE has deported three children who are U.S. citizens, according to PBS NewsHour reporting on their families' cases. Northwestern University's deportation research documents that ICE systematically detains U.S. citizens — hundreds of documented cases. A U.S.-born citizen detained twice in recent months has filed suit over it. Green card holders and legal residents have been swept up in enforcement aimed at others entirely.

The numbers show how far enforcement has outrun procedure. Habeas corpus petitions — the legal instrument for challenging unlawful detention — jumped from 222 in 2024 to roughly 8,000 in 2025, a more than thirtyfold increase in one year. That is not a surge in lawlessness by immigrants. It is a surge in people begging courts to check whether their own detention is lawful.

It has reached into civic life itself. The city of Denver and civil rights groups have sued to block armed ICE agents from operating at polling places, citing a chilling effect on voters and reports of ICE activity near voting sites in multiple states. Nearly 40 percent of voters now say they think ICE agents could show up where they vote. When people are afraid to cast a ballot, the fear itself is a result someone planned for.

"When You Refuse to Follow the Law While Enforcing It"

The deepest problem is not the volume of enforcement. It is the contempt for the legal procedures that make enforcement legitimate.

Federal judges across the country have ordered ICE to release detainees; Politico reported in February that ICE routinely defies those orders. A federal appeals court struck down the administration's mandatory detention policy, and courts have overwhelmingly rejected its roundup-and-detain approach — yet the transfers and deportations continue, sometimes after a judge has ordered a stop. Talk of suspending habeas corpus — the oldest individual right in the Anglo-American legal tradition, the one that says the government cannot lock you up without having to justify it — has moved from fringe speculation to the edge of the West Wing.

Due process is not a loophole. It is the mechanism by which we find out whether the person in custody is actually who the government says they are. The wrongful detentions of U.S. citizens are not a tragic side effect of skipping procedure — they are the predictable result. Skip the procedure, and you cannot tell the citizen from the non-citizen, the resident from the removable. That is what "following established legal procedures" is for.

A government that demands obedience to the law while refusing obedience to courts is not enforcing immigration law. It is dismantling the idea that law constrains power at all.

What You Can Do

1. Fact-check the fear before you share it. If an ad makes your stomach drop, that is the moment to check whether it is real. CNN, PolitiFact, and the Associated Press published fact checks of this cycle's trans-themed attack ads.
2. Ask what the ad is hiding. Manufactured enemies are a distraction strategy. When the headline is about a villain, ask whose record is not being discussed.
3. Know your rights and share them. The ACLU publishes know-your-rights guidance for encounters with immigration enforcement, regardless of status.
4. Vote like the procedure matters. Because it does. County by county, state by state, the people who decide whether courts get obeyed are on your ballot Nov 3.

Democracy's oldest defense is a fact. Fear can win an election. It cannot govern a country.

Wear your values. Vote your values.

Sources: CNN, "Fact check: Republicans' deceptive ads on key Democratic candidates' stances on gender surgery for children" (Oct. 8, 2026); PBS NewsHour, "ICE deported 3 children who are U.S. citizens, their families, lawyers say"; Politico, "How ICE defies judges' orders to release detainees" (Feb. 10, 2026); Northwestern University Deportation Research Clinic; The New York Times, "Denver Sues to Block Armed ICE Agents at Voting Sites" (Sept. 10, 2026); NPR, "Lawsuits seek to prevent federal officers at polls" (Sept. 18, 2026); Forum Together, "Reclassifying 'Applicants for Admission'"; ACLU, "Federal Appeals Court Rules Against Trump Mandatory Detention Policy."