There’s a quote, origins unclear, that contends “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

That’s even more the case with modern social media, which can spread a rumor with a simple click on the keyboard — whether based in fact or not.

Which is what appears to have happened when a claim circulated March 11 that Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had sent 300 undocumented immigrants by bus to Iron Mountain.

It even identified a hotel “next to the Taco Bell” where they’d been housed.

Never mind the validity of this rumor could easily have been checked out by just driving past the hotel, which is located right alongside U.S. 2/Stephenson Avenue, the four-lane, main east/west route through Iron Mountain.

The claim still got passed on — along with a push to attend the Dickinson County Board meeting that same night to protest this “action.”

Yet there was no truth to the report. No immigrants, illegal or otherwise, had landed at any hotel in Iron Mountain. Thankfully, when the board met several hours later, much of the steam already had gone out of the rumor — yet the board still was asked to look into the matter and formally declare Dickinson County would not be a “sanctuary” for migrants, according to Jim Anderson’s story on the meeting.

In other words, spend board and county staff time to address a problem that never existed, at least in this area.

So what might have given this rumor traction? Perhaps because two states — Texas and Florida — have transported immigrants by plane and bus to locations in the north. Since April 2022, Texas had moved 102,000 migrants out of state, at a cost of more than $148 million, according to NPR News.

Except Iron Mountain doesn’t fit the profile for becoming a destination for these migrants.

Florida and Texas are states with Republican governors who sent those immigrants to large, predominantly Democratic cities — such as New York, Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. — as a political statement.

Iron Mountain is a small city in a rural region that these days swings reliably Republican when voters go to the polls.

The only way this “busloads of illegal immigrants” to the region could be viewed as even remotely plausible is someone was willing to conceive Whitmer would take the same actions as her counterpart in Texas. And so far, there’s no evidence of that.

What has happened is Whitmer asked for volunteers for Welcome Corps, which seeks private sponsor groups to assist a specific refugee or refugee family. Sponsors would “provide support to newly arrived refugees for 90 days through acts such as greeting refugee newcomers at the airport, securing and preparing initial housing, enrolling children in school and helping adults find employment. Sponsors receive technical support from private sponsor organizations, which offer hands-on guidance to sponsors and refugees throughout their sponsorship journeys,” according to a Feb. 12 news release from Whitmer’s office. The full news release is at https://www.michigan.gov/leo/news/2024/02/12/volunteers-needed-to-support-refugee-resettlement-efforts-in-michigan.

“State officials stressed that those using the Welcome Corps program are not considered undocumented immigrants,” the Detroit News added in its story on the sponsorship program.

And, again, it’s volunteer hosting. No mention of busloads of migrants being aimed at any community.

Somehow, perhaps, that message got twisted. Or people just accepted the rumor, no matter how improbable, still was worth passing along, just in case …

But the intent of this rumor likely was to falsely fuel fear and outrage in a region far from the Mexican border or the cities struggling to deal with this mass transport of migrants from Texas.

It’s valid to have concerns, even complaints, about U.S. immigration policy. It’s true, as well, that Michigan is dealing with thousands of refugees and asylum-seekers while receiving little federal support.

But at a time when misinformation — and deliberate disinformation — seems to be reaching peak levels again given it’s an election year, it is critical that we all take a step back when something like this crosses our Facebook feed, is posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) or turns up on a blog, in an email or anyplace else in social media.

We should all pause to verify the information at least has some grounding in fact before reacting or, worse, helping potentially false statements to spread even further.

We need to do better on what we choose to elevate.