CBS, Trump Admin Offer Competing Accounts of Texas Man's Deportation

CBS News (Lean Left bias) and the Trump administration have offered different accounts of a recent deportation involving a Malian immigrant in Texas.

60 Minutes Segment: Moussa Diawara, 57, lived in Texas for about 25 years before being deported to Ghana in July. He told CBS's 60 Minutes that shortly after arriving in Ghana, Ghanaian officials detained him and forced him onto a flight to Mali where he became homeless and was left without money or identification. According to CBS, Diawara feared persecution in Mali due to his Christian religion. It also reported that documents issued to Moussa by the Department of Homeland Security during his deportation, including luggage tags and a medical form, listed Mali as the destination.

Asylum Application: DHS countered these reports and said Moussa claimed to be gay in his asylum application and that he feared being persecuted for his sexual orientation if he was sent back to Mali. Fox News (Right) reporter, Brooke Taylor, shared Moussa's asylum application on X where he had written, "When I became teenager…I was more comfortable being intimate with boys rather than with girls" and "Since I came to the USA I had the possibilities to express my feelings to men without an embarrassment no reserve." Moussa had also written in the application that his situation had "worsened" when he switched to Christianity. The Trump administration also said that the tags were produced by contractors at the detention facility Moussa was at and the medical form's destination entry was a clerical error. 

For Context: Moussa came to the US when he was 32 on a tourist visa. He overstayed his visa and filed for asylum. In 2012, a US immigration judge ruled that Diawara could be deported but that he couldn't be sent to Mali because he'd likely face persecution. While in the US, Moussa married a woman and had two children.

How the Media Covered It: CBS often described Moussa as "a Texas dad" and framed the instance as an outcome of poor immigration policies and bad execution from the Trump administration. It quoted Moussa describing his detention in Ghana as "kidnapping" and included criticism from immigration attorneys and Democratic lawmakers. James Percival, the seventh general counsel of DHS, said Moussa's claim showed just "how bad the immigration fraud problem is." Washington Examiner (Lean Right) focused on the Trump administration's response to the 60 Minutes segment.

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