The Big Three networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) seemed to be in a panic Tuesday evening after the White House signed off new directives to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) instructing them to crackdown on illegal immigration. “Tonight, President Trump's immigration crackdown revealed,” anchor David Muir freaked during the tease of World News Tonight, “The new and sweeping plan to deport undocumented immigrants across this country. Who will be targeted?”
Throughout their total of eight minutes and 35 seconds of coverage, not once did the networks report on the criticism conservatives had with the orders’ perpetuation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Instead, they focused solely on criticisms from the left and were supportive of DACA’s survival.
“The Trump administration today signing off on new immigration rules that could put the majority of the country's 11 million undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation,” warned ABC’s, Cecilia Vega. She also chastised the President for going farther than his campaign promises of targeting only the worst, “But the new orders, issued today by the department of homeland security, go far beyond that.”
While she hammered Trump for being less forgiving that former President Barack Obama, she also touted Trump’s call on DACA. “But the new rules do not affect the more than 750,000 people who came to the country illegally as children, known as dreamers,” she reported. But soon after she did an 180-degree spin and claimed that “today that the matter of dreamers in this country is not yet settled.”
On CBS Evening News, reporter Jeff Pegues seemed to take issue with DHS being tapped to build the border wall. “The Department of Homeland Security is also tasked with building President Trump's southern border wall, estimated to cost $21 billion,” he noted, “But a report by DHS' internal watchdog questions whether the department is up to the task.” He recalled that DHS had once inefficiently spent $1 billion to strengthen parts of the current border fence before calling off the project.
According to a critic of the agency who sat down with Pegues, “DHS was put together after 9/11 with good intentions, but it brought together a lot of disparate agencies that had never worked together.”
Anchor Lester Holt seemed to tout protesters who were angry over Trump’s immigration positions and executive orders during NBC Nightly News. “As the President's immigration policies continue to meet with resistance, activists unfurled a large banner reading “refugees welcome” at the base of the Statue of Liberty,” he said. The same place where he recently lectured viewers on the meaning of the monument.
NBC’s justice correspondent Pete Williams appeared to fret over the expansiveness of the order:
To handle the extra work, the memos call for hiring 5,000 more border patrol agents and 10,000 more ICE Agents who enforce the law nationwide. No more catch and release. People detained at the border will be held until their court hearings. No longer released and allowed to show up later. Immediate deportation without any hearing for people picked up who have been here illegally less than two years. It used to be two weeks. And prosecution or removal for adults here who pay human smugglers who pay to have their children brought here.
Williams even leaned on an “immigration rights” advocate to spread fear of the order. “Anybody who is undocumented whether they’re going to the grocery store or whether they’re dropping off their kids to school, at any given day they could be deported,” he exclaimed.
The blacking out of criticisms of Trump’s order by anyone other than liberals demonstrates that the liberal media’s concern is aligned uniformly with left as a whole. And it shows that they view criticism of the rules not going far enough as unimportant.