Four Pinocchios: Tom Cotton’s bogus claim that ISIS collaborates with Mexican drug cartels

The closest thing to actual evidence is a Fox News report about Texas law enforcement sending out a bulletin that social media chatter shows that Islamic State militants were aware of the “porous U.S.-Mexico border.” But dig into the piece and you see the “social chatter” amounts to just 32 Twitter and Facebook posts — and the bulletin acknowledges “the identities of persons operating these accounts cannot be independently verified.”

As mentioned, one article, in the Washington Free Beacon, was corrected. It initially claimed that a senior U.S. official had confirmed that the Islamic State was planning to infiltrate the border. But after the article appeared, a Homeland Security Department spokesman sent this statement: “There is no credible intelligence to suggest that there is an active plot by ISIL to attempt to cross the southern border.”