The leftist media is pumping out fake news in stories on the death of a migrant child to demonize President Trump, who insists on congressional funding for a border wall before he signs a bill to reopen the government, which is in day four of a partial shutdown.
Parts of the federal government closed on Saturday after open-borders Democrats and weak-kneed Republicans in the Senate refused to back Trump’s request for $5 billion to build the wall.
So now, the leftist media are connecting the death of an eight year old boy, dragged across the border illegally, to Trump and the border wall fight.
Headlines say the illegal-alien child died in “U.S. custody,” which is technically true but practically false.
Medical Care Given
In fact, the boy died in the hospital. The stories mention that, but they focus on his being in “U.S. custody,” and even try to connect Trump, the wall, and the government shutdown to his death.
But the boy’s unfortunate demise and shutdown are unrelated.
“Migrant boy dies in U.S. custody; Trump vows shutdown will last until border wall is funded,” the headline over a story in the Washington Post claimed.
After noting the boy died in the hospital after the fake-news headline, the Post falsely claimed this:
The most recent death highlighted the stalemate over President Trump’s demand that Congress approve additional money for a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, a standoff that has shut down parts of the federal government for four days. Trump said again Tuesday that there will be no change until his demands are met.
Then the Post tossed in a quote from Trump to connect him the boy’s death:
“I can’t tell you when the government is going to reopen,” he told reporters in an Oval Office appearance on Christmas morning. “I can tell you it’s not going to be open until we have a wall, a fence, whatever they’d like to call it. I’ll call it whatever they want. But it’s all the same thing. It’s a barrier from people pouring into our country.”
To the Post’s credit, it reported that border agents gave the boy and his father food and water, and gave the boy medication.
But then the Post quoted the usual radicals to denounce the Department of Homeland Security.
Likewise, the New York Times headlined its story this way: “8-Year-Old Migrant Child From Guatemala Dies in U.S. Custody.”
The Times also noted the boy died in the hospital, but only after this misleading first paragraph:
An 8-year-old boy from Guatemala died in United States custody early Christmas Day, the second death of a child in detention at the southwest border in less than three weeks, raising questions about the ability of federal agents running the crowded migrant border facilities to care for those who fall ill.
If a reader reads no further, he is left with the impression that U.S. authorities are responsible for the boy’s death.
Neither newspaper suggested that the father might be partly responsible.
The Associated Press was even more dishonest that the Post and Times:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection ordered medical checks on every child in its custody Tuesday after an 8-year-old boy from Guatemala died, marking the second death of an immigrant child in the agency’s care this month.
The death came during an ongoing dispute over border security and with a partial government shutdown underway over President Donald Trump’s request for border wall funding.
Yet even AP was forced to report that the boy received multiple antibiotics and really wasn’t, when he died, “in the agency’s care.”
Parents Guilty of Neglect?
The boy is the second child to die in “U.S. custody” after crossing the border illegally. But his death is not and cannot be linked to the fight over a border wall or the government shutdown.
A seven-year-old Guatemalan girl died in a hospital early this month. Border authorities say she died of dehydration, but her father disputes that account. He says he fed and watered the girl properly during his illegal trip across the border.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the Washington Post reported, blamed “lack of accountability, and a culture of cruelty within CBP.”
But neither the open-borders radicals nor the leftist media appears to have asked whether the parents are guilty of some form of neglect or abuse in dragging children across remote and dangerous areas of the border.
As the Post noted in its report on the girl’s needless death, “large numbers of Central Americans continue to cross the border into Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. The groups sometimes spend days in smugglers’ stash houses or walking through remote areas with little food or water before reaching the border.”
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