By Brittany Bernstein. Media: Nationalreview
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look at recent false narratives around immigration enforcement in the U.S. and cover more media misses.
How the Media Mislead on Immigration Enforcement
A new Fox News poll found that nearly half of respondents believe Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation efforts are too aggressive.
Border czar Tom Homan chalked those results up to the “false narrative” being fed to Americans by “95 percent of the media.”
“Seventy percent of the people we’re arresting are criminals,” Homan told Fox & Friends last week. “Who are the other 30 percent? [They’re] national security threats. We’ve arrested over 300 Iranian nationals. These are people who are a national security threat based on intelligence, based on other information. These are people we have to take off the street, that we have to deport.”
That 30 percent also includes individuals removed upon a judge’s request after receiving due process, Homan said.
“The Left will make it seem like we’re out arresting innocent people, disappearing people, kidnapping people, but the facts are the facts. ICE is prioritizing public safety threats and national security threats, and the numbers prove it,” he added.
A recent story out of Allentown, Pa., showed just how quickly misinformation can spread and influence people’s opinions.
A local newspaper reported last month that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “secretly deported” an 82-year-old Chilean grandfather to Guatemala. But the Department of Homeland Security said the paper fell for a “hoax” perpetrated by the man’s family. In fact, the Trump administration says the man was never taken into ICE custody at all.
“ICE never arrested or deported Luis Leon to Guatemala. Nor does ICE ‘disappear’ people — this is a categorical lie being peddled to demonize ICE agents who are already facing an 830 percent increase in assaults against them,” said Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS.
“This was a hoax peddled by the media who rushed to press without pausing to corroborate the facts with DHS. This was journalistic malpractice,” she added.
The story initially ran with a headline that read, “Allentown grandfather’s family was told he died in ICE custody. Then they learned he’s alive — in a hospital in Guatemala, they say.”
The story was picked up by large news outlets including The Guardian, the Daily Beast, and The Independent.
The family told the outlet that Leon was handcuffed and taken by federal officers at a green card appointment in Philadelphia. But DHS says there is “no record of the man appearing at any green card appointment in or around the area of Philadelphia” on June 20, the date in question.
The family reportedly claimed Leon was sent to a detention facility in Minnesota before being deported to Guatemala, where they said a Chilean relative told them he was in the hospital. Before that, the family says a woman claiming to be an immigration lawyer called and told them Leon died in ICE custody and offered to help them, but did not disclose how she knew about the case.
Meanwhile, the Guatemalan Institute of Migration, which coordinates with ICE on all deportations from the U.S. to Guatemala, told the Associated Press it has not received anyone matching the name, age, or nationality of Leon. The AP also noted that, while Guatemala agreed to receive deportees from the U.S. who are from other Central American countries, that agreement does not include Chileans.
The Trump administration similarly refutes reporting from the Nashville Banner that the agency failed to provide medical treatment or prenatal care for a woman in its custody and that this lack of care ultimately caused the woman to lose her baby.
“This reporting is absolutely FALSE. Iris Dayana Monterroso-Lemus had FULL medical, prenatal care,” McLaughlin said. “We have documentation to show it. Iris Dayana Monterroso-Lemus, 37, is a citizen of Guatemala who has been arrested multiple times for child abuse and is wanted on an active warrant for homicide.”
Monterroso-Lemus had an ultrasound and ob-gyn visit, as well as dental care and medication, according to DHS. She was also admitted to a hospital and saw multiple nurses.
“As soon as she identified the distress on April 29, ICE provided immediate medical assistance and transferred her to a hospital,” DHS added.
DHS also denied reporting from MassLive that a Massachusetts high school illegal alien was held in solitary confinement, with the department clarifying that the facility where he was detained is not even equipped for solitary confinement.
And in a viral video from June, a man tearfully claims that Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided a Los Angeles elementary school graduation, leaving behind hysterical students whose parents fled the event to avoid federal agents.
But it turns out that federal agents were never at the graduation.
In the video posted to Instagram by user @heymrhowie, the man said he heard parents were leaving a graduation ceremony at Gratts Elementary because ICE was raiding the event, and some parents “didn’t have papers.”
“And the kids are freaking, grabbing teachers, and crying on their legs because they don’t know if they’re about to see their parents when they get home,” the user said in the video. “What the f*** is this?”
But Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho debunked the claims in a news conference.
“We’ve investigated it, and all the reports that came back was that no such event happened,” he said.
He added, “What is possible is, considering the level of fear and awareness in our community, if you see three unmarked vehicles, three mini-vans, three SUVs, driving through a neighborhood, obviously you’re going to suspect that that may be a possibility. We believe that that may have been the case.”
While the media may be quick to run with stories that affirm reporters’ preconceived narratives, it is true that the government has at times mistakenly deported individuals. Perhaps no case is more infamous than that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an alleged member of MS-13 in the U.S. illegally, who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador despite a judicial order barring his deportation to El Salvador based on his claims that he’d be persecuted by a gang if returned to his home country. Under the order, Abrego Garcia could have been legally deported to another country, just not to El Salvador.
In another case, a makeup artist from Venezuela who was seeking asylum in the U.S. as a gay man was deported to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador by the Trump administration after officials apparently identified him as a member of the Tren de Aragua gang based on tattoos he had of crowns. He maintains he has no ties to the gang and says his tattoos are in honor of his parents, his hometown’s Christmastime “Three Kings” festival, and his work in beauty pageants. He was sent back to Venezuela in a three-nation exchange over the weekend.
Headline Fail of the Week
MSNBC says “Sydney Sweeney’s ad shows an unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness.”
In the now-infamous ad for American Eagle, the actress capitalizes on the play on words between “genes” and “jeans.”
“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color,” Sweeney says in a teaser for the new campaign. “My jeans are blue.”
Liberal news outlets were up in arms over the video, with some drawing comparisons to Nazism.
“The advertisement, the choice of Sweeney as the sole face in it and the internet’s reaction reflect an unbridled cultural shift toward Whiteness, conservatism and capitalist exploitation. Sweeney is both a symptom and a participant,” MSNBC producer Hanna Holland wrote in an MSNBC.com column.
Over on ABC’s Good Morning America First Look, anchor Rhiannon Ally claimed, “The play on words is being compared to Nazi propaganda with racial undertones.”
Robin Landa, a professor of advertising at Kean University in New Jersey, explained: “The pun ‘good genes’ activates a troubling historical association for this country. The American Eugenics Movement and its prime between 1900 and 1940 weaponized the idea of good genes just to justify White supremacism.”
Media Misses
• The New York Times was forced to issue an editor’s note last week on its story, “Young, Old and Sick Starve to Death in Gaza: ‘There Is Nothing.’” The story, which ran on the front page, featured a prominent photo of a malnourished infant and his mother.
“Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, about 18 months, with his mother, Hedaya al-Mutawaq, who said he was born healthy but was recently diagnosed with severe malnutrition. A doctor said the number of children dying of malnutrition in Gaza had risen sharply,” read the photo caption.
However, the NYT failed to mention that the boy has a genetic disorder. Four days after the photo first ran — and after the image was picked up by the Times of London, The Guardian, the Daily Express, and more — the Times added an editors’ note to the story.
“This article has been updated to include information about Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, a child in Gaza suffering from severe malnutrition. After publication of the article, the Times learned from his doctor that Mohammed also had pre-existing health problems,” the editors’ note stated.
• Former ABC News correspondent Terry Moran recently acknowledged that his former employer is “biased” against President Trump because the newsroom lacks “viewpoint diversity.” ABC cut ties with Moran earlier this year after the correspondent attacked Trump and White House aide Stephen Miller on social media.
“Let’s talk about bias. I worked at ABC News for almost 28 years, and I’m proud to say that,” Moran wrote on his Substack on Tuesday. “But: Were we biased? Yes. Almost inadvertently, I’d say. ABC News has the same problem so many leading cultural institutions do in America: A lack of viewpoint diversity.”
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