Network Morning Shows Shovel Disinformation Campaign Talkers Against ICE

On Thursday morning, the broadcast networks trudged out into the bone-chilling, snowy cold of Minneapolis to stir up trouble and smear Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents with their preferred narratives of the day from their allies in the deep-pocked, far-left thuggery hunting the Twin Cities for ICE agents to harass. This time, one narrative showed liberal journalists play amateur attorney and the other pulling on the heartstrings.

NBC’s Today shared a lie that spread throughout the day Thursday — which led to our friend and MRC Bulldog Award winner Drew Holden naming and shaming a slew of offenders — that ICE had engaged in a mind-boggling kidnapping of a five-year-old boy.

Correspondent Maggie Vespa warned “a local school district...is sounding alarms, they say, about four of their students taken into ICE custody including a five-year-old boy, who they say was detained with his father in the family’s driveway.”

“The district alleges that another adult in the home begged agents to leave the child with them but that the agents refused. NBC News reached out to DHS about this overnight. They didn’t respond to us, but the agency did tell The Washington Post that their policy is to ask parents if they want to be removed with their children or be placed with a person designated by the parent,” she added.

Fact check: Pants on fire.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provided a comprehensive explanation of this situation. The main takeaway? The boy’s father fled on foot upon seeing ICE and thus left his child. As any sane person would, ICE’s focus shifted to the welfare of the boy:

Vice President Vance also addressed this story’s virality as disproportionate to its factual basis:

Earlier in the piece, NBC huffed about a scene outside a gas station of a mob harassing federal law enforcement. Fourth hour co-host Sheinelle Jones said there were “more tenses clashes between protesters and federal agents in Minneapolis” as “demonstrators confront[ed] officers” while “the nation’s Border Patrol commander...[threw] a gas cannister” at them.

Vespa also painted law enforcement as the aggressors (click “expand”):

And [the Vice President’s visit] comes, as you point out, as tensions soar here on the ground. one of the latest clashes involving one of the most prominent figures in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, that is Border Patrol commander — right there — Gregory Bovino throwing a canister into an angry crowd of protesters yesterday after warning those protesters multiple times that it was gas.

Now, DHS says this started because officers, including Bovino were going gas station to gas station in the area trying to use a bathroom that they kept getting turned away, the agency said, and a group of protesters, in their words, started to stalk them. They say clash happened and the situation devolved to that. 

CBS Mornings continued to show that, when it comes to the AM program, the Bari Weiss-led network has a long way to go.

Co-host Nate Burleson began the Minneapolis coverage by stating there was “important new information this morning on the immigration crackdown in Minnesota” as “a memo obtained by CBS News shows that ICE agents have been told that they can force their way into suspect’s homes without a judge’s search warrant.”

This led into what was largely a re-racking of correspondent Nicole Sganga’s piece from Wednesday’s CBS Evening News claiming ICE is not at all banned from cooperating with or operating in Minnesota jails:

Meanwhile, ABC’s Good Morning America had less than two minutes on the unrest their friends eagerly foment. Correspondent Matt Rivers focused on the warrant nonsense:

What are the facts here?

Leave it to Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin to explain:

Former Trump Justice Department chief of staff Chad Mizelle quote-tweeted a reality these liberal journalists aren’t acknowledging as they’d rather play attorney because perhaps they’ve watched some episodes of Law & Order or listened to true crime podcasts: “Final order of removal = due process complete. At that point, evading ICE isn’t activism—it’s being a fugitive.”

In response to a “civil rights litigator,” Mizelle explained on the legal rationale: “They are not entering American’s houses; they are entering the houses of illegal alien fugitives. Fugitives who have been given every chance to present their claims and who received due process. So yes, it is the Govt’s position that illegal alien fugitives can’t avoid deportation by hiding in their houses.”

To see the relevant transcripts from January 22, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).