Here’s the latest talking point from those opposed to enforcing our immigration laws: that our federal government lost 1,475 unaccompanied minors in their possession.
The claim originated from a misunderstanding of testimony made from Health and Human Services (HHS) Acting Assistant Secretary Steven Wagner. For some context, when unaccompanied minors are discovered at the border, the HHS has a program that places them with their parents, family members, or another sponsor. Wagner was speaking about following up with families that have taken in unaccompanied minors when he said:
From October to December 2017, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) attempted to reach 7,635 unaccompanied children (UAC) and their sponsors. Of this number, ORR reached and received agreement to participate in the safety and well-being call from approximately 86 percent of sponsors. From these calls, ORR learned that 6,075 UAC remained with their sponsors. Twenty-eight UAC had run away, five had been removed from the United States, and 52 had relocated to live with a non-sponsor. ORR was unable to determine with certainty the whereabouts of 1,475 UAC.
Read that again if you need to: he did not say that the government lost these children. What Wagner said is that of the children that were placed with families, 1,475 of the families didn’t respond to requests about their whereabouts (probably because many of those families are illegal immigrants). Pretty easy to understand, right?
Apparently not.
Here’s how the New York Times reported on the story as if there’s an element of doubt here:
And USA Today:
And PBS:
And of course, hundreds of sensationalist liberal blogs picked up the story too, but I thought it would be more useful to highlight “respectable” sources reporting on the bogus claim. Are we to believe that none of them double checked Wagner’s testimony for the context? I find that impossible to believe.
It reminds me of another story this week when a number of images of children (presumably of illegals) in detention facilities went viral. (RELATED: Liberals Try And Paint Trump As Heartless Towards Immigrant Kids, Ignore One Key Detail).
So-called journalists from the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, The Guardian, and countless others shared the images on social media. The only problem was that the images were from 2014 when Barack Obama was President. It was amazing to see so many journalists simply delete the photos off of their social media feeds once they were caught because if they truly cared about those children, it wouldn’t matter who was President when they were allegedly mistreated.
Liberals are masters at using emotion to influence political opinion, and children are great pawns to exploit for that goal. It’s a shame more people can’t see through it.
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