President Donald Trump referred to “coyotes” helping to smuggle families from Mexico across the southern border to the United States during Thursday night ‘s presidential debate on the subject of illegal immigration.

“Children are brought here by coyotes and a lot of bad people, gangs, and brought here, and used to use them to get into our country,” he said. “We have a frontier as solid as we have ever had. We’ve got over 400 miles of a brand new wall, you see the numbers. And we’ve got to let people in, but they’ve got to come in legally.

Following that comment, Twitter lit up with a flurry of shocked reactions, as users believed the president meant that literally, coyotes were smuggling people across the border.

“Since when did the coyotes start taking the children here? “Charles tweeted.

“Are the children brought here by the coyotes? “The actress Peri Gilpin tweeted” Frasier.

“What does ‘the children are brought here by the coyotes’ mean? “Nicole Schuman tweeted from PRNewsonline.

“I thought I was stealing when I learned that,” the Tennessee Titans tweeted fullback to Khari Blasingame in response to a tweet that said, “Kids are buying coyotes here-WTF DONALD TRUMP.”

“Hot damn, the coyotes are so smarter and more capable than I ever credited them. I ‘m sorry for underestimating you, “tweeted the actor and producer Sendhil Ramamurthy.

“Did @realDonaldTrump just say that 545 children can’t find their parents because they come across ‘cartels and coyotes?’ How the heck does a coyote carry an whole human across the border? Lord—-Stop talking, “said Georgia State Rep. Dar’shun Kendrick.

“The children came to America on the coyotes!?! Is there anything I miss? “Eric Metcalf of the Cleveland Browns tweeted.

“I’ve seen a lot of coyotes here in SoCal, but I’ve never seen one carrying a kid,” Natalie Campisi of Forbes said in a now-deleted tweet.

And there were so many more of them:

Other leftists clearly attacked the president for making the point at all and did not confuse the point with literal coyotes.

“TRUMP and the GOP have torn down 520 children from their parents! They were coming with their parents. They’re not Coyotes, they’re their kin. This is the crimes perpetrated by TRUMP and GOP, “tweeted actor Mark Ruffalo.

“Imagine calling immigrant parents who bring their children to the United States for a better life ‘Coyotes’ The level of xenophobia is getting sick,” David Hogg tweeted.

As The Federalist points out, “coyote” is a common word for traffickers on the southern border between border patrol officers and politicians.

“Human smuggling occurs on an industrial scale along the U.S.-Mexico border, carrying hundreds of millions of dollars per year to traffickers, corrupt Mexican officials, and drug cartels, which charge a per-person ‘tax’ for every man, woman, and child who crosses the Rio Grande in a region under their control,” the outlet said.

“The number of family groups arrested at the border was at an all-time high at the height of the migrant crisis in 2019,” she continued. “Smugglers — coyotes — would bring huge crowds, often as many as a thousand people at once, and order them to turn to the U.S. The Border Patrol is seeking asylum. Nothing like this has ever happened before, definitely not on this scale.