In a story for Thursday’s NBC Today designed to put pressure on Republicans to reach a DACA immigration deal with Democrats, correspondent Jacob Soboroff lamented that the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants sometimes follow their deported parents back to Mexico. Buried within the three-minute report was the fact that the father of one such child was sent back after being convicted and imprisoned in the U.S. for drug trafficking.
“And now to the raging debate over immigration and a group that fight leaves in limbo – hundreds of thousands of children born here in the United States,” co-host Savannah Guthrie declared as she introduced the segment. Soboroff warned: “There are around 800,000 young immigrants who could be deported if a deal isn’t worked out in Washington soon. And a recent study says a quarter of them have U.S.-born kids.” He fretted: “So what happens to them if their parents get deported?”
“There are around 50,000 foreign-born students in Baja, California, 30,000 of them are in Tijuana. And the majority of those are U.S. citizens,” the reporter explained. He then talked to one boy from California in that situation:
SOBOROFF: What’s your name?
GEORGE [STUDENT]: George.
SOBOROFF: George, Jacob. Nice to meet you. Where are you from, George?
GEORGE: I’m from Bakersfield, California.
SOBOROFF: You’re from the United States?
GEORGE: Yes.
SOBOROFF: Are you an American citizen?
GEORGE: Yes.
SOBOROFF: Oh, you are?
GEORGE: And Mexican. Well, my dad was deported.
SOBOROFF: So how long have you lived here?
GEORGE: Just barely a year and a half.
SOBOROFF: What’s it like to live in Mexico? Different than the U.S.?
GOERGE: Very different. I’ve actually cried sometimes, I miss my friends.
SOBOROFF: You miss your friends in the U.S.?
Noting that “George is hardly alone,” Soboroff highlighted how schools in Mexico were offering “classes in English and in Spanish” to help U.S.-born students “assimilate into a world they’ve never known while keeping them connected to the home they’ve left behind.”
Moments later, viewers were introduced to George’s father:
SOBOROFF: So you got deported and they followed you here?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN [GEORGE’S FATHER]: Yeah, basically.
SOBOROFF: Can I ask you what happened?
MAN: Yeah, I got in trouble, I was in drug trafficking.
SOBOROFF: After serving time and getting deported, George’s dad found work here, in construction.
Even many Democrats have claimed that they support the deportation of illegal immigrants who commit felonies. Apparently NBC has decided to stake out a more left-wing position on the issue by offering such a sympathetic portrayal.
Wrapping the report, Soboroff again connected the story to the current debate in Washington:
So there are at least 200,000 American-born kids and DREAMers that are facing deportation. If that were to happen, every single one of those kids would face a situation just like George did. They’ve got to find a way to stay in the U.S. or follow their parents to a foreign land.
By conflating the deportation of an illegal immigrant who committed a drug crime with the broader DACA issue, NBC is essentially arguing that it’s wrong for anyone to be deported, no matter what the circumstances.
