It seems like just about every day now, we’re seeing stories from news outlets about ICE sweeps that either didn’t happen, or that happened but just not how the mainstream media and the activist left portrayed them.
For instance, KTLA has gotten really bad about leaving the pertinent facts out of their news teasers on stories about ICE immigration enforcement activity in Los Angeles amid the LA riots.
Case in point, this one:
Left out of their promo was this bit of extremely relevant information, courtesy of Fox News national correspondent Bill Melugin:
I was at this operation with Noem. It wasn’t targeting a “pregnant mother”, it was targeting her previously deported illegal alien Mexican husband who had been convicted of drug trafficking in February & had an attempted murder charge pleaded down to an assault conviction. ICE had a criminal judicial warrant for his arrest, signed off on by a federal judge, because he illegally re-entered the U.S. after removal, which is a felony.Of course, none of that context is in @KTLA reporting here as they only spoke to his wife, who apparently *shockingly* didn’t disclose any of his criminal history.
There have been other instances, of course, like the stories of the children who are U.S. citizens being “deported” – only to find out once you read the fine print that it was their illegal immigrant mothers who were being deported and who, according to ICE and DHS, wanted to take their children with them.
It’s hard to know which is more infuriating, though. Those types of deliberately sensationalized stories from the press or the ones from either the media or social media influencers that are made up out of whole cloth.
It is on that note that we turn to a video shared last week by an alleged employee of the Los Angeles County school system. In it, a man is seen crying while alleging, without evidence, that a neighboring elementary school that was holding a graduation ceremony was subjected to an ICE raid, which terrified the students, the family members, and school administrators.
Watch (language warning):
The clip was originally shared on the Instagram page of a guy who goes by the username “heymrhowie,” and was also posted to TikTok and Facebook. It went viral, with views in the millions, so much so that it prompted celebrity wacktivists like Eva Longoria to warn of elementary school graduation ceremony raids:
The problem? It was fake news, according to the LA Times of all places, which fact-checked the claim:
On Monday, Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Alberto Carvalho said there was no confirmed threat to the Friday culmination at Gratts Elementary, located just west of downtown.“We’ve investigated it,” Carvalho said during a news conference, “and all the reports that came back was that no such event happened.”He added, “What is possible is, considering the level of fear and awareness in our community, if you see three unmarked vehicles, three mini-vans, three SUVs, driving through a neighborhood, obviously you’re going to suspect that that may be a possibility. We believe that that may have been the case.”
Politifact fact-checked it, too, referencing the LA Times story as their primary source:
This isn’t the first debunked “ICE raid” story, and it won’t be the last, but it does provide a helpful reminder not to believe everything you see claimed on social media.
-Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter/X.-
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