Why has this viral tweet not been community noted? A few days ago, I came across this story about ICE secretly deporting a Pennsylvania grandpa who was a legal US permanent resident when he went to replace his green card after misplacing it. Allegedly, it was reported that he never had a single run-in with the law. And now his family had no idea how, but he ended up deported in Guatemala. I was about to break my silence and go ape shit about ICE and DHS overstepping. This was a legal immigrant; not an illegal migrant who crossed the border or someone in a transitory status who lied on visa application forms. Turns out, this is looking like it’s a total hoax. Not even remotely based on reality at all. So far, there’s been no correction to this super viral post, and to the articles published on the Daily Beast, Guardian, and Independent (all of their social media posts on all platforms have also taken off). This reminds me of that period between 2015 - 2021 when the media completely inflamed any story that remotely took the shape of racist cop / white person did a racist thing to a poor vulnerable Person of Color. We ended up with a not insignificant number of hoaxes (remember Jussie Smollett and all the nooses found in public places). This was a textbook case of Chomsky’s manufacturing consent until BLM overplayed their hand and everyone saw through it. This story about the deported Chilean-American grandpa was just too good to be true. When something resembles a perfect archetype that aligns too well with prevailing media narratives (Trump admin is so fascist that they’re now deporting helpless innocent boomer LEGAL US permanent residents), one should always wait and look into the story further before one reflexively hits “share.”

Here’s the Daily Beast, Guardian and The Independent. No correction up on each of these articles thus far

And this is what passes as the media’s attempt to “set the record straight” They do this by saying “ICE says” or “ICE denies” in the headlines, making it look like the grandpa was deported but ICE claims it didn’t happen. It’s bullshit. They know what they’re doing. We’ve seen this same playbook over and over again for like 8 years now