Terror suspect in Colorado attack turns out to be legal
Did media repeat apparent lies by feds without verifying?
Federal officials have repeatedly claimed that the Egyptian man accused in the attacks in Boulder, Colorado, is in the country illegally. Media have repeated these claims seemingly without question and without bothering to verify them with any independent experts.
Major and minor news outlets around the world repeated the claim that the suspect is an “illegal alien” in headlines and in their stories. Besides the fact that it is a ridiculous term – it is not people, but their actions, that are illegal – it turns out the claims are wrong.
In the days after the assault, NBC News and The New York Times dug a little deeper than many outlets, reporting that the Department of Homeland Security confirmed an important detail about the suspect’s immigration case, namely that he had filed for asylum in September 2022.
The Times also reported that department spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin confirmed that the suspect had not received a final decision on his asylum application. CNBC reported what is likely the main reason why the suspect’s asylum case has not yet been decided: immigration courts are “backlogged with about 3.6 million cases, which can take years to resolve.”
What I’ve not seen are any news outlets quote independent experts about what asylum actually means and what the process involves.
Cut to the chase: a person who is waiting for a ruling on an asylum application is in the country legally.
So says Hon. William E. Hanrahan, a retired assistant chief immigration judge for the San Francisco immigration court and a former criminal judge in Wisconsin.
“Individuals who have filed an asylum claim and are awaiting a hearing are, in fact, here legally until the immigration court determines otherwise,” Hanrahan wrote in an email exchange shared with his permission by a mutual friend and my former newspaper colleague from the 1980s, Jeff Miller.
So, why does it matter how the suspect is described? Federal officials sure felt it was important to apply a label to the man. The wrong one suits their narrative but not the truth.
Hanrahan has an answer for that.
“Especially at this time, it's important to scrupulously check the facts and not simply passively spread the anti-immigrant narrative and hateful hype of this administration.”