Secretary Noem criticizes network for ‘sold out’ journalism, says officers protected child abandoned by criminal father.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem slammed NBC on Wednesday, accusing the network of lying about a recent encounter between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and a 5-year-old autistic girl in Massachusetts.
Speaking on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” Noem responded to a report that NBC had corrected after initially claiming ICE detained the child to pressure her illegal immigrant father to surrender.
“What they [NBC] did was absolutely lie to the American public,” Noem said. “What happened in that situation with that autistic little girl is that her father was a criminal. He was a criminal who had endangered children in the past, and then he abandoned her in the vehicle and ran off to protect his own freedom.”
The DHS Secretary stated that the ICE officers involved in the incident were the ones who protected the child after she was left behind by her father, Edward Hip Mejia.
According to video obtained by Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra and later cited by NBC, Mejia called his wife while driving with the girl, believing he was being followed. His wife told Telemundo that when they arrived home, her husband “managed to run back into the parking lot of my house,” leaving the child behind.
NBC initially published the story under the headline, “ICE held 5-year-old autistic girl in Massachusetts to pressure father to surrender, family says.” The network later updated the headline to, “Video shows ICE with 5-year-old girl while agents attempt to arrest her father,” and added a correction stating, “An earlier version of this article mischaracterized the activities of ICE agents in the video. The article has been updated.”
Noem said the DHS is forced to issue multiple press releases daily to counter what she called false reports from “legacy media.” She accused these networks of being “sold out for a lawless country and a borderless country” and driven by their opposition to the Trump administration.
“Over and over and over again, we have to keep putting out press releases just to make sure that people know the truth,” Noem said. “The problem is that these networks are so sold out for a lawless country and a borderless country…that they will do anything.”
Noem’s comments come amid ongoing criticism from Trump administration officials regarding the rhetoric used by some Democrats against ICE agents.
Figures like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz have referred to ICE as a “modern-day Gestapo,” while others, including Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett, have compared them to “slave patrols.”
Noem concluded by vowing that the DHS would continue to enforce the law and hire more law enforcement officers to “bring peace to our streets.”
READ: Stephen Miller Calls Former FBI Director “Corrupt,” Says Multiple Charges On The Table
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