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Wednesday Morning Rant

Lies of Omission

The American press is the most dependable institutional complex in the history of man. It can be counted on to lie, no matter what. Whatever topic, whatever issue, whatever place, whatever time, the American press will always engage in deceit. Whatever story any given press whore is telling, it will be incomplete, inaccurate, wholly fabricated or some combination of these. There was a truly splendid example of this earlier in the week. This story came out of Boston, but the place is irrelevant. They're all the same, this just happens to be a local story.

The story is about the current boogeyman of the Left: ICE. The Boston Globe article decides to engage in lying by omissions, rather than outright fabrication. It starts with the attention-grabbing headline:
Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility
The story itself is about the baffling injustice of it all.

The cliff notes are this: the kid was being held by Everett police following what the Globule calls "an interaction." That could be anything. He ended up with ICE (the only actual mystery involved). He was shuffled around by ICE until he ended up at an immigration jail in Virginia. The known facts of the case take up a couple of sentences, and the rest of the article is traditional heartstrings stuff and implication.

The boy is a 7th-grader at Albert N. Parlin School in Everett, his mother said. The teen and his family, who are Brazilian nationals, have a pending asylum case and are authorized to work legally in the United States, Lattarulo said.

So they are so-called "asylum-seekers" who were handed paperwork by the US government. Tell me one I've never heard before if you want me to weep. But I digress. Those are still, mostly, facts. Then come the parallels to demonize immigration enforcement as awful and bad for kids:

The boy’s detention is the latest in a string of ICE arrests of teenagers in Massachusetts since the Trump administration launched in September what they called "Operation Patriot 2.0", surging resources to the region for immigration enforcement.

In September, 16-year-old Gustavo Henrique Reis Oliveira was arrested by ICE on Milford’s Main Street and later released. A couple of weeks later, 19-year-old Joao Marciano do Carmo was arrested on his way to work, and his family didn’t hear from him for five days. Carmo is still in a detention facility in Mississippi, according to his family. Neither teen has a criminal record.

19? They're reaching and hoping you don't notice, but that's just par for the course. They also, through this juxtaposition, imply that the person involved in this story also has no criminal record. No evidence for that is presented, they just want you to think it. It continues as you'd expect:

The 13-year-old’s mother said her son has called her crying from the Virginia facility, where he’s sleeping on concrete with an aluminum sheet as a blanket, she said. Berto said her son’s foot is healing since he broke it while riding a bike recently. She’s worried about his physical health because he’s in pain, and he said he had little to eat.

How sad. There's no confirmation of any of that, but surely the kid's mother can be trusted without question! No need to follow it up.

The mother, of course, has a GoFundMe or similar and the Globule gives her the final line of the article:

"I need help to bring my son home. He's only 13 years old and was taken by ICE," she wrote in Portuguese. "We're suffering a lot with this situation. God bless anyone who's able to help."

The last time Berto heard of her son was on Saturday. She fears ICE will continue moving him around the country without communicating with her.

"The way [ICE] is treating people, especially a child, is very cruel," Berto said.

The Globule of asserts that ICE should never have been let in thanks to the state's aggressive anti-ICE rules, and goes on to mention that ICE often moves Massachusetts detainees to other states because of those other states' "low asylum and bond approval rates" and because Massachusetts is "sympathetic to migrants." It's a freaking sanctuary state that never cooperates with ICE, so ICE moves them out. But that's not a nice way to put it, I guess.

Far and away the best line of the article, however, is:

Lattarulo said he and the family still don’t know what led to the encounter with the police or how ICE got involved.

So the lawyer and his family "don't know" and the Globule didn't wait for a response from the local PD or ICE after asking them. On a Sunday. But this story was so important that they just had to publish it on Monday morning. It absolutely required running off half-cocked without verification because it's an unfolding crisis or something.

Which is a convenient excuse. The Globule wouldn't have waited anyway. They had their story of villainous ICE, and they ran with it. This also had the result of the leaving them looking like idiots when DHS did decide to reply. Directly to the public. On X:

Here are the facts: he posed a public safety threat with an extensive rap sheet including violent assault with a dangerous weapon, battery, breaking and entering, destruction of property.

He was in possession of a firearm and 5-7 inch knife when arrested.

The "poor oppressed little boy" narrative is incompatible with the "teenage thug climbing the gangland ladder" narrative, and so much for the "no criminal record" parallels. Whoops! Because of the subsequent publicity, the Globule had to acknowledge it and try to make some lemonade:

Officials claim the Everett teen detained by ICE had a gun. His lawyer says that’s no reason to take him out of Mass.

Nice try, guys. He wasn't taken out of Massachusetts because he's a gangster, he was taken out of Massachusetts because Massachusetts is a sanctuary state who would have put him back on the streets.

I remain thankful that the American press is as rotten as it is. If they were clever, it would be far worse. If they had a passing familiarity with the truth, one would have to read their stories carefully. But they aren't, and so it's easy. Just assume they're lying, either overtly or through omission.