With the obvious purpose of striking terror into its viewers, Estrella TV characterized President Trump’s announcement launching the National Vetting Center, an initiative designed to improve how different federal agencies work together in vetting foreigners seeking to enter the country, as a new White House office “in charge of hunting immigrants.”
In keeping with Estrella’s habitual, over-the-top framing of Trump administration actions, the National Vetting Center was presented by network anchor Adriana Yañez and reporter María Teresa Saravia as yet another frontal, full-fledged attack against all immigrants and U.S. Hispanics.
ADRIANA YAÑEZ, ANCHOR, ESTRELLA TV: Donald Trump is creating a new office in the White House that will be in charge of hunting immigrants. According to the President, in the interests of national security. María Teresa Saravia informs us.
PRESIDENT TRUMP O/C: And killing their own people…
MARIA TERESA SARAVIA, REPORTER, ESTRELLA TV: After Donald Trump published a controversial message about the death of an NFL player, blaming an undocumented immigrant, he once again created conflict against the Hispanic community. Now, the President decided to create an office dedicated to investigating immigrants who, according to him, represent a threat to national security.
Missing from the report was any mention of the ongoing MS-13 gang threat to communities throughout the country, particularly Hispanic communities, and which was the principal subject of the White House meeting and press conference in which the National Vetting Center was announced.
According to the presidential memorandum that created the new entity, the National Vetting Center aims to “improve the manner in which executive departments and agencies coordinate and use intelligence and other information to identify individuals seeking to enter the country who present a threat to national security, border security, homeland security or public safety.”
Along with fusing intelligence and law enforcement data from across the government in one place, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen also emphasized that “as part of this effort, DHS and its partners will make certain that mechanisms are in place to ensure that the National Vetting Center is able to accomplish its mission while protecting individuals’ privacy, civil rights and civil liberties.”
Once again, in its journalistic jihad against the Trump administration, Estrella was caught playing fast and loose with the facts.
Below is a complete transcript of the above-referenced report, as aired on the February 7, 2018 edition of Noticiero Estrella.
ADRIANA YAÑEZ, ANCHOR, ESTRELLA TV: Donald Trump is creating a new office in the White House that will be in charge of hunting immigrants. According to the President, in the interests of national security. María Teresa Saravia informs us.
PRESIDENT TRUMP O/C: And killing their own people…
MARIA TERESA SARAVIA, REPORTER, ESTRELLA TV: After Donald Trump published a controversial message about the death of an NFL player, blaming an undocumented immigrant, he once again created conflict against the Hispanic community. Now, the President decided to create an office dedicated to investigating immigrants who, according to him, represent a threat to national security. This new office will work together with ICE and other immigration offices to identify all foreigners who enter the country and who could be a danger to American society. In a press conference, Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan assured that his Department will deal with all criminal activity related to immigrants.
JOHN CRONAN, ACTING ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL: The Department of Justice will be surging hundreds of federal prosecutors, new federal prosecutors, to the field, specifically to focus on violent crime and immigration offenses.
MARIA TERESA SARAVIA: The new agency will be called the National Vetting Center. The person in charge of that department will be Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who along with Jeff Sessions and Rex Tillerson will appoint each of the members who will belong to the Center. The main mission of the office is to unify the different agencies’ data bases and in that way more quickly detect the threats that immigrants, according to Donald Trump, represent. María Teresa Saravia, Estrella TV News.
