Members of the press have hit upon a deliberate strategy to influence the debate surrounding immigrant deportations: Lead with emotion, then trickle out facts, perhaps selectively.
The coverage follows a pattern. First, the headline presents the deportee as a blameless bystander. Then come the laments — how the individual has been “ripped” from his community, how his family is in turmoil, how his life has been upended, and so on.
These individuals are often portrayed using unofficial but undeniably American labels: “Maryland dad,” “Georgetown scholar,” and “Harvard researcher.” Rarely, if ever, are they identified by nationality. Rarer still is any early detailed mention of criminal charges or convictions, where applicable. When details of accused or convicted wrongdoing emerge, they are buried deep within the piece, concealed beneath the advocacy quotes and appeals to sentiment.
This editorial sleight of hand has become too consistent to attribute to anything but intent. It is a conscious effort to steer the immigration debate in a direction that unequivocally favors the deportees.
Consider Newsweek’s Apr. 6 article titled, “Veteran who has been in U.S. since he was 4 years old faces deportation.” We are informed that Jose Barco is not only a veteran but also a decorated one. We learn that he served in Iraq. We learn that he is not a U.S. citizen. We are also told early on that he recently completed a 15-year prison sentence, but nothing more is mentioned about that for several paragraphs.
Before delving into his criminal record, Newsweek takes the reader on a walking tour of Barco’s personal history, including his family ties, his unit’s history, and a boilerplate quote noting that while the Trump administration “says it is prioritizing individuals with criminal records or gang affiliations, some legal residents and non-criminal immigrants have also been detained and deported.”
Not until paragraph 17 do we learn the only important fact in the entire story: that in 2008, Barco “opened fire on a house party crowd in Colorado Springs, striking a 19-year-old, who was five months pregnant at the time, in the leg.” He was convicted of two counts of attempted first-degree murder and one count of felony menacing. That detail, clearly central to any assessment of Barco’s case, is relegated to the article’s back third.
Newsweek also published a similarly structured but less egregious piece titled, “DACA recipient who came to U.S. when he was 4 years old deported.” We meet Evenezer Cortez Martinez, a husband and father who was deported to Mexico. We are informed of his abrupt removal, his attorney’s protests, the extent of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, and his years spent living in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
Not until paragraph 12 do we learn that Martinez had also been “ordered removed in absentia” last June, during the Biden administration. We also learn that his advance parole document was “issued in error,” according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Again, these are pertinent facts, yet we find them oddly delayed or undersold.
This is reminiscent of ProPublica's 2017 tearjerker, titled, “They got hurt at work. Then they got deported,” which downplayed identity fraud for purposes of undocumented immigrant advocacy. That report’s subhead warned of supposedly shady insurance company tactics under Florida law and dark implications for “Trump’s America.” The outraged tone only gives way a few paragraphs later, when we learn that one of the featured migrants lost his coverage after he was caught using a dead man’s Social Security number. Even after that admission, the tone remains sympathetic — undocumented workers who committed identity fraud are presented as victims first, lawbreakers second.
ABC News and NBC News recently published reports on a Russian researcher at Harvard, with headlines that read, “DOJ charges Harvard researcher who expressed fears over being returned to Russia” and “Russian medical researcher at Harvard, who protested the Ukraine war, detained by ICE.”
It’s only after the headlines and subheads, and after NBC's claim that the researcher has a "history of persecution ... over her political activity" that we learn that she was caught smuggling undeclared Petri dishes, unknown substances, and embryonic frog cells into the U.S. without permits. And it’s not until the 23rd paragraph of the NBC story that we learn immigration officials claim they found messages on the researcher’s phone indicating she planned to smuggle the materials and had taken deliberate steps to evade detection. ABC's report omitted that detail entirely. The "Harvard researcher" was officially charged with smuggling last week.
There are instances where immigration officials commit serious errors, as appears to be the case in the recent deportation of two Salvadoran brothers from Long Island. That’s real news and worthy of scrutiny. But is it unreasonable to ask that we not paper over the very legitimate reasons some people are deported, rather than place our entire weight on the side of the scale that presumes no one should ever be deported?
Consider the May 8 New York Times headline: “He faced a possible prison term for assault. Instead, he was deported.” The subhead reads, “Federal agents are rounding up criminal defendants and deporting them before trial. Local prosecutors say the disruptions make communities less safe.”
One might reasonably argue that deporting a man accused of assault contributes to community safety. But that type of thinking apparently no longer fits into today’s immigration coverage.
Becket Adams is a writer in Washington and program director for the National Journalism Center.
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