THE DAILY BS: HOW MUCH CAN YOU HANDLE?
SPARE ME THE BS (I’ve got things to do).
- The official U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement X account responded to a 60 Minutes deportation story Monday with the words “Fake & Gay!”
- ICE accused CBS of producing a poorly researched report after Fox News obtained a 2009 asylum application in which deported Malian national Moussa Diawara claimed persecution because he was gay.
- The extraordinary government post sparked a new controversy over ICE’s messaging, while the underlying allegations of immigration fraud remain unproven.
LAY IT ON ME (I’ve got time).
Apparently, somebody running the official United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement account has decided the days of carefully worded government press releases are over.
And whoever it was came out swinging at CBS.
On Monday, the verified ICE account on X responded to Fox News reporting about a deported Malian national featured on 60 Minutes with two words that probably weren’t approved by a traditional government communications committee.
“Fake & Gay!”
Yes, that’s what the official account of a federal law enforcement agency posted.
Not some anonymous internet wise guy. Not a parody account. The actual ICE account.
Washington’s public-relations handbook may need another revision.
The post followed Fox News correspondent Brooke Taylor’s disclosure of a 2009 asylum application filed by Moussa Diawara, the Malian national featured in Sunday’s 60 Minutes report.
CBS had presented Diawara’s separation from his wife and two children in Texas as part of a broader investigation into the Trump administration’s third-country deportations.
Diawara entered the United States in 2001, overstayed his visa and later obtained protection from removal to Mali after an immigration judge determined that returning him there could expose him to persecution.
He subsequently lived in Texas with his American family and worked as an Uber driver.
But Fox News reported that Diawara’s asylum application included a detail CBS hadn’t explained to viewers.
He had claimed that he feared persecution in Mali because of his sexual orientation.
DHS officials seized on the document, questioning his credibility and alleging immigration fraud.
And ICE decided to make the dispute considerably louder.
Responding to Taylor’s reporting, the agency wrote: “Fake & Gay! Moussa Diawara, the Malian national featured in this shockingly poorly researched @60Minutes report, now faces allegations of immigration FRAUD after his asylum application surfaced, revealing that he claimed to be a HOMOSEXUAL man who feared persecution in Mali.”
That’s quite a sentence to find on an official government account.
For years, Americans have complained that government communications sound as though every word has been inspected by six lawyers and a committee dedicated to removing anything resembling a human personality.
Well, ICE has certainly solved that particular problem.
Whether this is how a federal law enforcement agency should communicate allegations about an individual is another question entirely.
The post also raises a factual issue that deserves more attention than the two-word slogan.
ICE has emphasized that Diawara is now married to a woman and has children. But marriage to a woman does not, by itself, establish that an earlier claim of attraction to men was fraudulent.
A person can be bisexual, can have relationships with both sexes or can marry for reasons unrelated to sexual orientation.
That doesn’t mean every statement in Diawara’s asylum application was accurate. It means establishing fraud requires something more substantial than pointing to his family photographs.
The administration has other questions about his immigration history, and it is entitled to investigate them.
But the government’s public allegations and a formal legal finding of fraud are two different things.
Meanwhile, CBS has its own questions to answer about what viewers were told.
Its Sunday report focused on Diawara’s family separation, his removal to Ghana and his account of being sent onward to Mali despite a previous immigration ruling barring his direct return there.
The broadcast also addressed his fear of persecution related to his religious conversion. But it did not describe the separate sexual-orientation claim in the 2009 application reported by Fox.
That’s potentially important context for an investigation centered on his immigration case.
The agency’s response has now created a second controversy alongside the original deportation story.
One concerns the accuracy and completeness of CBS’s reporting. The other concerns whether an official law enforcement account should use a taunting slogan when discussing an individual’s disputed asylum claim.
The Trump administration has made direct, combative messaging a defining feature of its public communications.
DBS WIRE SOURCES (I’ve got all day).
- Mediaite — ICE’s official account posts “Fake & Gay!” response
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — Original X post
- Fox News — Report on Diawara’s 2009 asylum application
- CBS News — Original 60 Minutes investigation into Diawara’s deportation
- Blaze Media — DHS criticism of CBS’s deportation coverage
