I gave an interview to a reporter from the New York Times today on–what else?–immigration enforcement in Minnesota. I told him, among other things, that there has been a series of myths or lies about alleged outrages committed by ICE locally. In each case, the story has been debunked, but only after it has been spread far and wide. The truth never catches up.
The latest instance is the tale of the five year old boy who was “arrested” by ICE. This story has not just gone national, it has become international news. Thus, the front page of the London Times carried this headline:
This is the first paragraph of the Times story:
The story is a lie. What actually happened is that ICE agents were in the process of apprehending an illegal alien; when the illegal immigrant saw the agents coming, he fled and abandoned his five year old son. What were the agents supposed to do, leave the poor kid to freeze to death on the sidewalk? (A very real possibility.) No: they briefly took him into protective custody.
After the initial lie that the boy was “arrested” or “seized,” there were follow-up claims, all of which proved to be false. You can read the actual facts here.
Today JD Vance came to Minneapolis and gave a press conference, accompanied by ICE agents. He addressed, among other things, the mythology surrounding the five year old boy:
One of the Left’s most absurd urban legends about ICE in Minneapolis was the claim, widely asserted and believed by many despite its facial improbability, that ICE was raiding schools. The genesis of the claim was an incident where ICE agents were pursuing an illegal who fled to an area near a school, where he was apprehended. That was it. No kids present, let alone an ICE raid on school children. But the rumor was enough to cause the Minneapolis School District to cancel all classes.
What we have here is a calculated campaign of misinformation in which pretty much all of the liberal media are complicit. Meanwhile, I ask myself: if ICE is doing all kinds of bad things in Minnesota, why do liberals have to keep making stuff up?
