A Michigan lawmaker said he saw buses of 'illegal invaders.' They were NCAA basketball teams.

A Michigan lawmaker is facing backlash after mistakenly referring to student athletes traveling to Detroit for this weekend’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament games as “illegal invaders.”

State Rep. Matthew Maddock, R-Milford, posted a photo of three buses on a tarmac near an Allegiant Airlines jet at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) on Wednesday evening with the caption, “Happening right now. Three busses (sic) just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?”

But there weren’t “illegal invaders” onboard — the buses were carrying the four men’s basketball teams competing in Detroit for this weekend’s Sweet 16 and Elite Eight games, a Wayne County Airport Authority (WCAA) spokesperson confirmed to the Free Press.

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“The four men’s basketball teams competing in the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 at Little Caesars Arena arrived at DTW Wednesday evening. The buses seen in a photograph circulating online were transporting the basketball teams and their respective staffs,” a WCAA spokesperson said over email.

Gonzaga guard Ryan Nembhard (0) during open practice before the Midwest Regional Sweet 16 round at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit on Thursday, March 28, 2024.

Detroit’s Little Caesar’s Arena is hosting Sweet 16 games Friday — first, the No. 5 seed Gonzaga faces top seed Purdue, with tipoff slated for 7:39 p.m. Then, No. 2 Tennessee faces No. 3 Creighton, which is scheduled for 10:09 p.m. The winner of the two games will meet Sunday for the Midwest regional championship and a trip to the Final Four in Glendale, Arizona.

It’s unclear if Maddock took the photos in his initial post. His district does not cover DTW. Maddock didn’t respond to a voicemail left by a Free Press reporter on Thursday.

Other users on X, formerly known as Twitter, where Maddock made the post, were quick to note Gonzaga’s account had posted photos earlier with the caption “Wheels up to the Motor City” including the Allegiant jet.

According to plane tracking website FlightAware.com, an Allegiant flight took off from Spokane International Airport in Washington at around 1 p.m. local time and arrived at DTW just before 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. Gonzaga University, a private liberal arts school with just over 5,000 undergraduate students, is located in Spokane, Washington.

A spokesperson for the airline confirmed the Gonzaga men’s basketball team was on the flight.

Allegiant does not offer standard commercial flights into DTW — on its website, Allegiant lists Grand Rapids, Flint and Traverse City as options for flying into Michigan.

Republicans, broadly, see ongoing concerns about undocumented migrants crossing the nation’s southern border with Mexico as a winning issue for them in the upcoming 2024 election. A 5,140-person survey from the Pew Research Center conducted Jan. 16-21 found 78% of Americans said the large number of migrants seeking to enter the U.S. at the U.S.-Mexico border is either a crisis or a major problem.

But others have highlighted potential danger of using evocative language to describe migrants, like “illegal invaders.” On X, Maddock’s post was promptly “ratio’d,” or bombarded with replies criticizing his post. State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, D-Royal Oak, said Maddock’s post was dangerous in a separate post.

“A sitting State Representative sees a group of busses (sic) at the airport and immediately yells ‘illegal invaders’ which is a pretty rude (and also, frankly, dangerous) way to greet the Gonzaga Men’s Basketball Team arriving for March Madness,” McMorrow said.

Sam Inglot, executive director of progressive advocacy organization Progress Michigan, said in a statement “Maddock and so many Republicans across the country are carelessly using militaristic language to describe an already-marginalized group of people. This type of dehumanization inevitably leads to violence and we cannot let Republicans get away with using it to divide our communities and put people in danger.”

Contact Arpan Lobo: [email protected]. Follow him on X (Twitter) @arpanlobo.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: A Michigan lawmaker said he saw buses of ‘illegal invaders.’ They were NCAA basketball teams.