{"id":1548827,"date":"2025-07-24T15:45:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T19:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1548827"},"modified":"2025-07-24T15:45:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T19:45:00","slug":"the-legend-of-luis-leon-the-media-embraces-another-anti-ice-hoax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/the-legend-of-luis-leon-the-media-embraces-another-anti-ice-hoax\/1548827\/","title":{"rendered":"The Legend Of Luis Leon: The Media Embraces Another Anti-Ice Hoax"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Legend Of Luis Leon: The Media Embraces Another Anti-Ice Hoax<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Jonathan Turley,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the legend becomes fact\u2026print the legend.\u201d <\/strong><\/em>Those words from an editor to a young reporter in \u201cThe Man Who Shot Liberty Valance<\/a>\u201d still appear to be the modus operandi of the media. That was demonstrated this week with the legend of Luis Leon after The Morning Call in Allentown, PA,\u00a0printed<\/a>\u00a0yet another harrowing account of ICE agents \u201cdisappearing\u201d an immigrant. According to a story quickly picked up by other eager outlets, the 82-year-old grandfather, a legal asylum holder, was roughed up and then deported to Guatemala. The problem is that there appears to be no proof supporting the story of the \u201cfamily members\u201d cited by the reporter.<\/p>\n

According to The Morning Call, Luis Leon, a Chilean national, was trying to replace his lost green card at a local USCIS office when he was suddenly deported to the wrong country, Guatemala, and he ended up in a hospital with pneumonia.<\/strong> The story further recounted how Leon\u2019s wife was kept in custody in brutal conditions for 10 hours before she was released.<\/p>\n

Media, including The Guardian, eagerly picked up the story of another \u201cdisappearing\u201d of an immigrant. <\/strong><\/p>\n

As the story went viral, a few people decided actually to look into the case and found that it not only made no sense but there is no evidence of such a deportation.<\/p>\n

For its part, The Morning Call changed key facts but did not withdraw the story as a hoax.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Guatemala states that there is no record of Leon entering the country<\/strong>. While the granddaughter claimed he was sick in a Guatemalan hospital with pneumonia, a doctor at the hospital claimed that there is no record of him being there<\/strong>. At the same time, Chilean authorities are saying that a man with the name Luis Leon with the same birth date as the Luis Leon died in their country in 2019.<\/p>\n

Then the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) became involved and stated that there was no record of any such arrest or deportation. <\/strong>It also mentioned that there was no green card appointment in Philadelphia or arrest at the location cited by the family. It clarified that the only record of this man is from 2015 under a waiver program, not an asylum program, as alleged.<\/p>\n

Chilean journalist Jose Del Pino confirmed that there is no record to support the U.S. media\u2019s claims and that a man by the same name and date of birth died in Santiago, Chile, in 2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, The Morning Call continued to run claims by \u201cNataly,\u201d the supposed granddaughter.<\/p>\n

The DHS issued a statement slamming the media for another hoax without a modicum of effort to confirm the facts:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Morning Call,\u00a0an Allentown, Pennsylvania, newspaper published the following headline on July 20, 2025,\u00a0without any facts from DHS about major allegations made against law enforcement:<\/p>\n

The family of the individual allegedly told reporters he was handcuffed and taken by federal officers at a green card appointment in Philadelphia.\u00a0This claim is completely false.\u00a0There is no record of the man appearing at any green card appointment in or around the area of Philadelphia on June 20, 2025.<\/p>\n

Furthermore,\u00a0ICE has not deported Luis Leon\u2014a Chilean national\u2014to Guatemala, as his family members have said.\u00a0ICE\u2019s\u00a0only record of this individual entering the U.S. is in 2015 from Chile under the visa waiver program.<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0reporting by the Associated Press<\/a>, the Guatemalan Institute of Migration\u2014which coordinates with ICE on all deportations from the U.S. to Guatemala\u2014claims they have not received anyone matching the name, age or nationality of Luis Leon back into Guatemala.<\/p>\n

According to the report, the family alleges a woman claiming to be an immigration lawyer called and offered to help them but did not disclose how she knew about the case. The family claims this individual also told them Leon died in ICE custody.<\/p>\n

\u201cICE never arrested or deported Luis Leon to Guatemala. Nor does ICE \u2018disappear\u2019 people\u2014this is a categorical lie being peddled to demonize ICE agents who are already facing an 830% increase in assaults against them. This was a hoax peddled by the media who rushed to press without pausing to corroborate the facts with DHS. This was journalistic malpractice,\u201d\u00a0said\u00a0Assistant Secretary McLaughlin.<\/p>\n

The story had the same feel as the widely reported whipping of migrants by border agents.<\/strong> The media went into a frenzy over a false story accusing mounted officers of whipping undocumented migrants near Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 19, 2021. Reporters like CNN\u2019s April Ryan\u00a0continued to peddle the false story<\/a>\u00a0for years despite being debunked.<\/p>\n

Like this story, it could have been immediately refuted by any reporter. Indeed, the photographer captured the scene, which showed agents using bridle reins to guide their skittish horses. The entire videotape clearly shows the agents using the reins on their mounts, not on the migrants. Not only did the photographer quickly deny seeing any officers whip migrants, but the videotape clearly refuted that allegation. However, for many in politics and the media, it did not matter because it played into a racial-justice claim of the \u201cwhipping (of) Haitian asylum seekers<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

House Speaker\u00a0Nancy Pelosi\u00a0<\/a>(D-Calif.) condemned \u201cthe inappropriate use of what appear to be whips by Border Patrol officers on horseback to intimidate migrants<\/a>.\u201d Senate Majority Leader\u00a0Chuck Schumer\u00a0<\/a>(D-N.Y.) decried \u201cimages of inhumane treatment of Haitian migrants by Border Patrol \u2014 including the use of whips<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0Vice President\u00a0Kamala Harris\u00a0<\/a>emoted\u00a0on \u201cThe View\u201d about how the brutality \u201cinvoked images of some of the worst moments of our history, where that kind of behavior has been used against the Indigenous people of our country, it has been used against African Americans during times of slavery<\/a>.\u201d Reps.\u00a0Maxine Waters\u00a0<\/a>(D-Calif.) and\u00a0Ayanna Pressley\u00a0<\/a>(D-Mass.) described the incident as \u201cworse than what we witnessed in slavery<\/a>\u201d and \u201cwhite supremacist behavior<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Biden\u00a0<\/a>rushed to express his own revulsion and rage, too: \u201cIt was horrible what \u2014 to see, as you saw \u2014 to see people treated like they did: horses nearly running them over and people being strapped. It\u2019s outrageous.\u00a0I promise you, those people will pay<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Administration delayed the results of the findings but eventually admitted that there was no such whipping. It still said it would punish the agents for other violations in what some of us viewed as\u00a0a face-saving measure for President Biden<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In reading the original story, there was little support outside of the claims of the family and key elements of the story appeared to change as others challenged the account.<\/p>\n

Frankly, I am still mystified by this controversy. It is hard for me to believe that a family would fabricate such facts while supplying pictures and details of this kind. Yet, the changes in the story and the fact of corroborating material undermine the account. Perhaps the family can produce further evidence in the coming days but, at a minimum, the newspaper ran with a story that lacked such foundation.<\/p>\n

In the end, it does not matter that the story may be false. After all,\u00a0you can get a Pulitzer prize<\/a>\u00a0for a debunked story funded by a political campaign.\u00a0<\/strong> It fits the preferred narrative of many in the media. It is the scourge of \u201cadvocacy journalism<\/a>\u201d where reporters pursue social or political agendas in framing the news.<\/p>\n

If there is support for its story, The Morning Call needs to publish those facts. If not, there is a story in all of this on how a hoax went viral, but it is not the one that most reporters would relish.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nThu, 07\/24\/2025 – 11:45<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/markets\/legend-luis-leon-media-embraces-another-anti-ice-hoax<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Legend Of Luis Leon: The Media Embraces Another Anti-Ice Hoax Authored by Jonathan Turley, \u201cWhen the legend becomes fact\u2026print the legend.\u201d Those words from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1548828,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1548827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1548827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1548828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1548827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1548827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1548827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}