Using the same tired tactics of social media click-bait and misleading headlines, the media are now suggesting that once again a young migrant child has died after being detained at the U.S. border, using deceptive language to imply the toddler's tragic death was somehow related to the Trump administration’s poor handling of illegal alien border crossers.
It's a claim that, if you bother to read the actual reports, couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Even still, here are just a few of the top headlines running rampant on the interwebs Thursday:
The blazing headlines predictably sparked anti-Trump outrage from many on Facebook and Twitter from those ready to accuse the president and border agents of abusing and neglecting migrant children up to the point of death.
Except here’s what actually happened.
According to multiple reports, in which much of the relevant information has been so buried that it’s practically a footnote, the 2-year-old Guatemalan boy, whose name has not been publicly released, was apprehended with his family on April 3 after the group crossed the U.S. border unlawfully. Like everyone else, he and his family were then taken to a local border detention facility to be processed.
It wasn't until three days later, on April 6, that the boy’s mother told border agents that her son was sick. He was immediately transported to a local hospital for treatment before being transferred to a children’s hospital the next day, where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. The family was officially released from CBP custody on April 8, while the boy was still in hospital.
According to Guatemalan officials, the boy had picked up the illness somewhere on the arduous journey his family had voluntarily made from their home country through Mexico and into the United States – not because of anything that occurred at the detention facility.
“He had health problems because of the conditions in which they were traveling, high fevers and difficulty breathing,” Guatemala’s Consul Tekandi Paniagua said.
“We have reiterated the message that trips to the United States, in the condition in which the Guatemalan families are undertaking them, is highly dangerous,” Paniagua told the Washington Post. “We’ve seen four cases in a row of children who have lost their lives in this way.”
Even still, the facts haven’t stopped outlets like The Hill from publishing pointed statements such as, “The boy, who has not been identified, is the fourth child to die after a border apprehension since December.”
Unfortunately, he’s also the fourth child to die from an illness they picked up on the way to the United States and that border agents could do nothing about, all thanks to open-border policies that encourage families to risk their lives – and that of their small children – to come to the United States knowing they’ll be allowed to stay.
And the media wonder why Americans continue to lose faith in their “journalism.”