“This isn’t journalism. It’s PROPAGANDA on overdrive,” Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) says in a X.com post challenging readers to count how many times the biased, legacy media can refer to an illegal alien, MS-13 gang member as a “Maryland man” or “Maryland father” in a 90-second video.
Legacy media have been aggressively portraying MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a sympathetic Marylander who was unjustly deported to his home country of El Salvador and should be allowed to return to the U.S.
“If you still had any doubt about how deceptive the left-wing media truly is—watch this,” Rep. Hunt says, challenging readers to count the number of times media call Garcia – who was living in Maryland illegally – a “Maryland man” or “Maryland father” in the video montage.
The unofficial count: 53 times.
“He is not a Maryland man. He is not a Maryland anything. He is an illegal alien from El Salvador with a deportation order from the United States,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller explains in the video.
Rep. Hunt’s video doesn’t overstate the media’s bias favoring illegal immigration in their coverage of either Garcia’s case, in particular, or illegal immigration, in general, analysis by the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters division reveals.
A NewsBusters study of CNN and MSNBC coverage of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from April 1 through April 18 documents the bias:
Likewise, from April 1 through the morning of April 15, ABC, CBS, and NBC spent a combined total of 64 minutes, 57 seconds on the “Maryland man” trial – but not even a single second covering the conviction of Salvadoran illegal immigrant Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez for the horrific rape and murder of Maryland mother Rachel Morin.
Additionally, NewsBusters analysts identified 26 outright falsehoods about Garcia’s supposed “legal” status in the country. MSNBC was responsible for 20 such mistruths, while CNN aired the remaining six. Reporters on MSNBC falsely portrayed Garcia’s immigration status almost twice as often as they described it correctly (20 times versus 11).
The media’s portrayal of Garcia as a legal resident of the U.S. who was “mistakenly” deported is extremely misleading.
Garcia has had an outstanding order of removal since 2019. However, because of his supposed fear of persecution by gang members in his home country, an immigration court granted him a withholding of removal to El Salvador.
However, a withholding of removal does not confer legal residency – it merely means that the individual in question is temporarily exempt from being removed to the one specific country for which he was granted the withholding (El Salvador).
Thus, Garcia could have been legally deported to any other country.