According to Gallup, America’s trust in the media hit a historic low in 2024. A Gallup survey found that only 31 percent of Americans still believe that the media “fully, accurately and fairly” reports the news.
The reason for that distrust is on full display when it comes to coverage of immigration law and policy. When reporting on President Trump’s new immigration enforcement policies, the establishment media has resurrected all of the finest traditions of 19th century, muckraking yellow journalism.
Rather than deliver unbiased information to the public, the media’s strategy is apparently to cast every immigration-lawbreaker as a victim of American injustice and every government official who is in favor of immigration enforcement as a heartless fascist.
For example, a recent article in the Miami Herald contained this gem of an assertion about President Trump’s immigration enforcement actions: “[W]hile Trump administration officials are highlighting the arrests of undocumented criminals, the latest news suggests that many of those detained are restaurant workers, house cleaners and others who have committed no criminal offenses.”
That is an odd assertion for a journalist to make. 8 U.S.C. § 1325, explicitly makes it a crime for an alien to enter the United States without inspection and formal admission. There is no requirement that an illegal alien break any other law to be deported. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can arrest and remove any alien who is in the United States in violation of immigration law. Anyone with training in journalistic research should have been able to locate that information in about a minute.
The media has made similarly strange claims about where ICE can conduct arrests. CBS News recently featured a piece titled “What to Know About Where ICE Can Operate, claiming that ICE can now “target” “schools, places of worship and other ‘sensitive locations.’” However, that is intentionally deceptive.
In the past, ICE followed a foolhardy policy of avoiding enforcement actions in so-called “sensitive locations.” But federal law does not prohibit ICE from arresting illegal aliens anywhere in the U.S. President Trump simply dropped this unreasonable limitation and told ICE it can exercise all of the authority granted to it under the law.
The media uses terms like “targeted” to imply that enforcement actions by ICE are persecution of foreigners rather than prosecution of law breakers. Similarly, terms like “sensitive locations” create a false impression that the law deliberately creates safe havens where scofflaws can hide out and avoid prosecution. However, this has never been true anywhere in the United States.
When there is the potential for an immigration-related “human interest” story, truth goes out the window in today’s media landscape. Pundits are currently having a Chernobyl-level meltdown about ICE’s arrest of a Nicaraguan national in Lynn, Massachusetts. According to the popular narrative, Zeneyda Barrera was arrested by ICE, following her arraignment on assault charges, despite having “asylum status” in the United States. Per the chattering classes, Ms. Barrera has become yet another victim of President Trump’s xenophobia.
The problem is this narrative is utterly false. Ms. Barrera has no lawful status in the United States. How do we know this? Because many of the same accounts that claim Ms. Barrera has lawful status in the United States have also referred to her family’s asylum applications as “pending.” Unless they applied for asylum after having lawfully entered the U.S. as nonimmigrants, asylum seekers do not acquire lawful status by the mere filing of an asylum claim that may very well be denied by the reviewing court.
When aliens are apprehended at, or near, the border and subsequently claim asylum, they are placed in removal proceedings before the Immigration Court. An Immigration Judge reviews their asylum claim. If the claim is determined to be valid, they are granted asylum and permitted to remain here. If the claim is not sustained, they are ordered removed from the United States.
While their asylum claim is pending before the Immigration Court, asylum seekers have no lawful status in the United States. Authorization to work, when granted, is conferred solely to keep aliens off the dole. Employment authorization is not authorization to remain in the United States.
Moreover, Ms. Barrera came to the attention of ICE because she assaulted her little brother in a dispute over a cell phone and a neighbor called the police. The whole matter is now being portrayed as a meaningless family kerfuffle. And—in the midst of sensationalistic media indignation—the Essex County district attorney has agreed to dispose of the matter by placing Ms. Barrera in a pre-trial diversion program. However, Ms. Barrera assaulted her sibling in the pro-criminal, pro-illegal-alien People’s Republic of Massachusetts. If the local police felt compelled to arrest her, then there is more to this case.
But that is exactly the point. There is always more to these cases, but Americans searching for the truth about immigration law and policy cannot find any of those important details in the establishment media. And that is because the American press is not reporting the objective truth about immigration; it is attempting to advance an anti-borders political narrative as the only possible truth—which violates absolutely every ethical standard the American media claims to hold dear.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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If they’re in our country illegally, they’ve committed a crime. We want all of them gone.
Break the law and learn the consequences spelled FAFO].
There are rules (the laws in question) to follow, and illegal aliens coming across our borders disregarded those rules by their explicit actions. The equal and opposite reaction is “capture and deport.”
I say to people, I don’t even believe the New York Time’s recipes. They are a socialist advocacy organization. They at one point in their existence owned part of the Boston Red Sox. They have been a duplicite organization almost since inception.