New reporting suggests the man was never taken into ICE custody at all and may have died in Chile in 2019.
A local Allentown, Pa., newspaper recently reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “secretly deported” an 82-year-old Chilean grandfather to Guatemala.
Now, DHS says the paper fell for a “hoax” perpetrated by the man’s family. In fact, the Trump administration says the man was never taken into ICE custody at all.
“ICE never arrested or deported Luis Leon to Guatemala. Nor does ICE ‘disappear’ people — this is a categorical lie being peddled to demonize ICE agents who are already facing an 830 percent increase in assaults against them,” DHS Assistant Press Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.
“This was a hoax peddled by the media who rushed to press without pausing to corroborate the facts with DHS. This was journalistic malpractice,” she added.
The story initially ran with a headline that read, “Allentown grandfather’s family was told he died in ICE custody. Then they learned he’s alive — in a hospital in Guatemala, they say.” The story was picked up by large news outlets including The Guardian, the Daily Beast, and The Independent.
The family told the outlet Leon was handcuffed and taken by federal officers at a green card appointment in Philadelphia. But DHS says there is “no record of the man appearing at any green card appointment in or around the area of Philadelphia” on June 20, the date in question.
The family reportedly claimed Leon was sent to a detention facility in Minnesota before being deported to Guatemala where they said a Chilean relative told them he was in the hospital. Before that, the family says a woman claiming to be an immigration lawyer called and told them Leon died in ICE custody and offered to help them, but did not disclose how she knew about the case.
Meanwhile, the Guatemalan Institute of Migration, which coordinates with ICE on all deportations from the U.S. to Guatemala, told the Associated Press it has not received anyone matching the name, age, or nationality of Leon. The AP also noted that, while Guatemala agreed to receive deportees from the U.S. who are from other Central American countries, that agreement does not include Chileans.
The report indicated the 82-year-old man had come to the U.S. in 1987 after being granted political asylum and had then spent 40 years in the U.S. working in a leather manufacturing plant before retiring.
Meanwhile, ICE also says its only record of the man entering the U.S. is in 2015 from Chile under a visa waiver program.
Morning Call published an updated story on Monday: “ICE says Allentown grandfather Luis Leon was never taken into custody, calls family’s story a ‘hoax.'”
The outlet said its reporters “repeatedly requested information from Ice during its reporting; an Ice spokesperson previously refused to confirm details, including whether or not Leon was even at the Philadelphia office, and said Monday that Ice investigators were not able to contact the family.”
The update said a woman who identified herself as Leon’s granddaughter, Nataly, said she visited Leon in a hospital in Guatemala City where he was apparently being treated for pneumonia.
But despite the claims of the granddaughter, who refused to provide her last name, Morning Call notes a Chilean journalist now reports that a doctor at the hospital in question had no record of Leon.
The Chilean journalist, Jose Del Pino, also presented Morning Call with a death certificate for a man with the same name and date of birth who died in Santiago, Chile, in 2019. Del Pino reportedly told the paper that Chilean citizens all have national identification numbers, and no other identification numbers match another person with that name and birthday.
As new details came to light, the family behind the story issued a statement to Morning Call saying they would no longer speak to the media and asking for privacy.
National Review has reached out to Morning Call for comment.
While the media may be quick to run with stories that affirm reporters’ preconceived narratives, it is true that the government has at times mistakenly deported individuals. Perhaps none more infamously than Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an alleged member of MS-13 in the U.S. illegally, who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador despite a judicial order barring his deportation to El Salvador based on his claims that he’d be persecuted by a gang if returned to his home country. Under the order, Abrego Garcia could have been legally deported to another country, just not to El Salvador.
In another case, a makeup artist from Venezuela who was seeking asylum in the U.S. as a gay man was deported to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador by the Trump administration after it apparently identified him as a member of the Tren de Aragua gang based on tattoos he had of crowns. He maintains he has no ties to the gang and says his tattoos are in honor of his parents, his hometown’s Christmastime “Three Kings” festival, and his work in beauty pageants. He was sent back to Venezuela in a three-nation exchange over the weekend.