An anonymous WorldNetDaily writer raged in a March 21 article:
A social media influencer from Venezuela has posted online a video telling illegal aliens how they can “invade” a home in the United States, if it’s “unoccupied” at the time, and claim “squatters’ rights’ to then live in it.
Apparently without limits.
The report comes on the heels of a report in WND that documented how “a bunch of squatters” invaded a home in New York.
[…]In his video he charges that under U.S. law, “If a house is not inhabited, we can seize it.”
The report said, “He appeared to be referring to adverse possession laws, commonly known as squatter’s rights, which allow unlawful property occupants rights over the property they occupy without the owner’s consent, in certain circumstances.” There also generally are required time periods, in some states extending to years for the required occupancy.
Millions of viewers had watched his screaming rant about taking over others’ property, and he claimed his “African friends” already have “taken about seven homes.”
Betsy McCaughey similarly raged over this video in her March 27 column, headlined “How to fight the epidemic of squatters”:
If you own a home and don’t want to lose it, keep reading.
Homeowners who go on vacation or a business trip, even for just a week, are returning to find their house overtaken by trespassers who fraudulently claim a right to be there. It’s happening to tens of thousands of homeowners from New York City to Atlanta and Los Angeles.
[…]There’s no time to waste in acting to protect homeowners.
Venezuelan TikTok influencer Leonel Moreno claims invading vacant homes is the only option for illegal migrants flooding into the United States. His now-deleted TikTok video explaining how to identify a home that is empty and ready for the taking reached 4 million views.
Surprised? Don’t be. Criminals from south of the border are coming in droves to plunder the far wealthier United States. Some cross illegally and are recruited by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and El Salvador’s MS-13. Others are coming in on tourist visas. Law enforcement is reporting a surge in South American burglary gangs operating in at least half the states in the U.S.
In fact, there is no “epidemic of squatters,” and there is certainly not happening to “tens of thousands of homeowners,” as McCaughey claimed. A more credible media outlet reported that squatting isn’t really an issue at all:
Juan Pablo Garnham, a researcher and communications manager at Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, called squatting “an extremely rare issue.”
Dunn, who started his law career in Detroit — “where there’s more abandoned homes than the city can count” — said, “I can probably count on one hand the number of legitimate squatting cases I’ve seen.”
Sateesh Nori, a clinical adjunct professor of housing rights at NYU Law School, said, “I haven’t heard of a single case recently in which a homeowner says there’s squatters in their home.”
[…]“What I think is happening is that it’s just a good story,” Nori said. “It only takes two or three examples for people to think this is rampant. I don’t doubt the facts in these several incidents that have been reported — and it’s quite horrible what’s happened to these homeowners — but I don’t think there is some kind of epidemic of squatters taking over neighborhoods in New York City or anywhere.”
Despite its rarity, squatting has emerged as a political cudgel for the right wing — fueled by a flurry of headlines that “feed into the larger narrative of crime, which is a political issue,” Nori said, noting that 2024 is a presidential election year and partisans are looking to motivate voters to go to the polls.
Indeed, all right-wing evidence of an “epidemic” can be traced back to that single video by Moreno, which rapidly spread through right-wing media — like WND — to manufacture outrage. Which mans WND is performing stenography, not journalism.