Tell the Truth is Human Events News’ press analysis series. These stories will focus on “news” being reported by either The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC News, NBC News, or CBS News. Despite 24-hour cable broadcasts, and an untold number of internet sources, these established, mainstream platforms continue to influence the majority of American citizens and their political opinions.
The “news” generated by these press is better regarded as “opinion” crafted in a way designed to discourage skepticism and critical thought on the part of the audience. To Tell the Truth will be Human Events News’ periodic effort to help address this bias, and restore the skepticism necessary on the part of all Americans to maintain a free society.
Earlier this week, the Washington Post and other mainstream news outlets were reporting on the news that 545 children who were abandoned at the U.S.-Mexican border have still not been reunited with any family members. The WAPO story states:
The 545 children are among more than 1,500 who were separated from their parents as far back as July 1, 2017, and whose cases were not immediately disclosed to the U.S. district judge who ordered the families reunited in June 2018, said American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Lee Gelernt. Some of these cases were part of an earlier pilot immigration program.
What the WAPO story does not tell readers is that there is nothing that is “new” about this story and that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that these children were separated from their families and not simply separated from “coyotes,” or illegal crossing guides, who have been routinely using children in order to facilitate illegal immigration into the U.S.
The program for separating children from their “families” was ended in 2018 by an executive order signed by President Trump. At that time there were 1,030 children reported as being held without adult relatives. Now that number has been reduced to the presently reported 545.
THE WAPO story brushed aside the concerns that were raised by the Obama Administration back in 2016 that prior court rulings forbidding the separation from children from “families” would potentially create a demand for children to be kidnapped and used as “entry tickets” into the country.
In May of 2018, the Washington Times reported that the U.S. was on pace to have more than 400 such attempts made by people attempting to enter the country illegally. That would have been a 900% increase over the prior year.
Former Homeland Security official, Jason Piccolo, legally blew the whistle in 2015 over children being released to criminal sponsors in the United States, a problem that particularly relates to unaccompanied minors showing up at the border. This is the cause of some unknown number of the current minors being held without families. In his own words, offered in a Washington Examiner op-ed in 2018 after the issuance of the Trump executive order, Piccolo wrote the following:
In summer 2015, I was a member of the Obama’s White House Security Council’s Human Smuggling Cell, which was run by the Department of Homeland Security. On Aug. 4, 2015, I was sent a spreadsheet from senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement managers. The spreadsheet provided data, including criminal history checks of UAC sponsors. There were 29,000 sponsors on the massive spreadsheet; 3,669 of the sponsors were convicted of crimes. The crimes ranged, among other things; from re-entry after deportation (a felony offense) to assault to actual sex crimes.
Piccolo described the convoluted process of what would happen with these unaccompanied children.
A child would enter the United States solo, no parent or guardian; the U.S. Border Patrol or a customs officer would encounter the child at the Mexican border and place them in custody; then the child would be processed by ICE. ICE would then release the child to the Department of Health and Human Services, which would in turn release the child to a contracted facility. Finally, the child would be released to a sponsor.
That sponsor occasionally being an actual felon.
Further evidence of the problem of children being used illegally and harmfully in the illegal immigration process is a story dated May of 2019 from the Washington Examiner that reported that 30% of the children who were given a rapid DNA test because of suspicious circumstances were found to not be related to the adult claiming to be their parent or family member. This is another reason it can be difficult to reunite a child detained at the border with their family.
The story that WAPO and other major outlets reported on this week is so dated a skeptical reader has to wonder why they would want to revive it at this particular moment when we are deep in an election news cycle.
To tell the truth, it would seem as though this old-news story may have been revived by the MSM for the purpose of diverting readers’ attention away from the scandals involving Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and their connections to foreign governments and illicit financial transactions. The MSM is refusing to cover these reports, but other media outlets are continuing to report details as they become available.
