Tipsheet

The Truth Emerges: US Border Patrol Not Responsible For Young Girl's Death, Her Father Confirms

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  December 17, 2018 10:25 AM

Last week, politicians and members of the media expressed outrage over the tragic death of a seven-year-old girl who died shortly after illegally crossing the US border with her father.  The details of her passing are heart-wrenching.  Border hawks blamed her parent for putting her life at risk by bringing her on the dangerous journey, while critics of the president's approach to immigration policy held up the incident as an example of the administration's inhumanity and callousness.  Many in the press certainly had their preferred framing:


Twitter's 'AG Conservative' (who is worth a follow) noted that in story after story, headline after headline, wrongdoing by US officials was at least implied.  In truth, the young girl had been severely deprived of sustenance for days prior to being taken into custody in a remote area, at which point American border patrol officers and support staff attempted to save her life.  After being manually revived twice, she was transported by air to a hospital, where she died.  Those verifiable facts did not stop a former press secretary for Bernie Sanders from spreading patently false information, which went viral -- and was shared by newly-minted leftist icon Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:


Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also piled on, demanding the Trump administration -- specifically Sec. Nielsen and the Department of Homeland Security -- be "held accountable" for the death.  Why?  There is no evidence whatsoever that US officials did a single thing wrong, as has now been confirmed by the girl's own father -- sadly, the man most responsible for what happened:


Eager to paint the Trump administration as heartless, far too many political liberals, including elected officials and journalists, rushed to smear American officials based on -- at best -- incomplete information.  How many are correcting the record and apologizing to the people they unjustly maligned, now that their drive-by attack has been exposed as deeply misleading?  This poor little girl's horrific demise was deemed to be ideologically valuable, so cheap partisan points were scored.  All the while, public trust in important institutions was eroded further, including both America's border security apparatus and the profession of journalism. America has an acute unreliable narrator problem, and far too often, the media's insatiable appetite for Trump bashing induces reckless laziness or agenda-driven shortcuts, which in turn embolden and partially vindicate the president's anti-press attacks.  This dysfunctional spiral continues apace, and neither side sees itself as the problem.  While we're on this general subject, I'll leave you with this: