The Trump administration is not impressed by a "sob story" put out by "60 Minutes" meant to undermine the mass deportation efforts undertaken in the president's second term.
The story that aired Sunday highlights the struggles of the family of Moussa Diawara, a 57-year-old man who was deported in July and claims he eventually ended up in his native country of Mali. During the segment, his wife, son, and daughter tearfully speak to him while they continue to reside in Texas.
'Just in case you’re wondering how bad the immigration fraud problem is.'
A judge ruled in 2012 that Diawara, who had overstayed a visa, could be deported, but not to Mali after he claimed that he would be persecuted there, CBS News reported. Diawara was deported to Ghana, and soon after his arrival, Ghanaian officials sent him to Mali, he claims.
He indicated to "60 Minutes" that he feared persecution in Mali, a Muslim-majority country, because he had converted to Christianity. He eventually escaped to another African country but asked CBS not to identify it, the outlet reported.
The story was clearly intended to elicit sympathy from viewers, but the narrative did not survive a fact-check from James Percival, the general counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who appeared in the segment.
"This illegal alien is @60Minutes poster child for what it claims are wrongful deportations," wrote Percival in a statement on social media Sunday night. "I pulled his file. His claimed reason for fearing Mali was that he is 'gay,' just in case you’re wondering how bad the immigration fraud problem is."
Percival suggested the family's sob story contradicted the father's claim that he feared persecution as a gay man.
A post from Immigration and Customs Enforcement reinforced the point and mocked the news program.
"The 60 Minutes sob story tonight highlighted an illegal alien and his wife and two children. One problem. The illegal alien claimed he was a HOMOSEXUAL in order to try and dodge deportation to Mali," read the statement.
"You literally cannot make this up," ICE added.
"60 Minutes" noted on social media and in the segment that the DHS had "questioned the credibility of Diawara's arguments for fearing persecution in Mali," without providing further details.
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"I absolutely believe with all of my heart that these third-country removals have stopped crimes from happening and kept Americans safer and that is our fundamental obligation at the Department of Homeland Security," Percival said on "60 Minutes."
The report said that about 25,000 people who had been deported from the U.S. had been sent to countries other than their country of origin.
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A dead body of a man was found near the Disneyland Resort entrance on Sunday, with police treating it as a potential crime scene.
The post Dead Body Found Near Disneyland Resort Entrance appeared first on Breitbart.
I knew our mail-in ballots had been sent out because my friends were posting photos of their ballots on social media. This meant my mail-in ballot was probably waiting in my mailbox, as well.
But I didn’t retrieve it right away. I let it sit there. The truth is that I don’t like mail-in ballots. I don’t trust them. I experience a traumatic response just thinking about them.
In 2022, remembering what happened in 2020, I took my mail-in ballot directly from my mailbox to the dumpster.
Since mail-in voting was implemented in Oregon back in 1987, nothing good has happened here. The state has gone straight into the toilet.
And when it was implemented nationwide, in 2020, well, then the rest of the country went straight into the toilet, too.
So yeah, I can barely stand the sight of a mail-in ballot. I am physically repulsed. I prefer not to have it in my house.
Utopian fantasiesI didn’t always feel this way. I was happy to participate at first. In the early 1990s, this new way of voting seemed fresh, modern, and convenient.
The envelope shows up in your mailbox. You open the outer envelope and there’s another envelope inside, along with the official ballot, with its ovals and government scan codes.
You fill out the ovals, fold it up, seal it, and sign your name. And then cheerfully drop it in a mailbox.
Safe and secureMail-in ballots are designed to look official, sanctioned, secure. They make you feel like the state is being extra careful with your personal ballot, your one precious vote.
But the reality is that your ballot is just beginning its journey. It gets driven here and there. It gets put into piles and bags and maybe gets dumped in one spot and then moved to another spot.
It ends up at the post office, or in a county warehouse space, or it gets fed into a counting machine. It might even get hand-checked by an election worker somehow trained to decide whether your signature looks enough like the one on file.
Really, who knows where your one precious vote goes? After it is opened, depending on who sees it first, it might go straight into the trash!
A feeling of helplessnessIn Oregon, mail-in voting is the only way you can vote. The future of your state, your city, your business, your family — it all depends on a complex system of mailing and sorting and counting and verifying.
And then maybe more ballots show up later. And the ballots of dead people are floating around. Or the ballots of people who used to live in your building.
And then activists “harvest” other people’s ballots. “Here, Grandma, let me help you fill that out.”
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L-R: Ronaldo Bolaños/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images; ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images
The big nightAfter you have mailed in your ballot, a couple of weeks pass, and then election night rolls around. Often, one of the candidates will appear to have an insurmountable lead. The local news shows the tallies. The pollsters make predictions. Everybody gets excited. The projected winner might even dare to celebrate.
But after three decades of mail-in voting, we Oregonians know better. What matters is not who wins on election night. It is who wins in the weeks after, when those last bundles of wayward ballots finally make it in. Only then is the final count concluded.
In Oregon, the winner is always a Democrat. Maybe not for every minor local position. But if it’s important, the Democrat wins.
Since mail-in voting was first implemented in Oregon almost 30 years ago, all our governors have been Democrats.
And for the last 12 years, they have been exclusively LGBTQ, far-left, DEI Democrats. This, in a state once known for its balanced, centrist political climate.
Going nationalIn 2020, I used my mail-in ballot to vote for President Trump, who won handily on the night of the election, but then somehow lost by a late-arriving influx of mail-in ballots which — against all statistical probabilities — were almost all cast for his opponent.
In 2022, remembering what happened in 2020, I took my mail-in ballot directly from my mailbox to the dumpster.
This was partly out of disgust and partly because I had made an important discovery: While door-knocking for a local candidate, I was given an app that had remarkably specific information about the neighborhood I was canvassing. I could see which residents were Republicans, how often they voted, and whether any other voters lived in their house. Which meant that who you voted for was public knowledge, and not private and anonymous like you had been told.
But if there’s a chance ...Fast-forward to now, and here I am, faced with another Oregon governor’s race. It is between two women, of course. But one of the women is a reasonable and straightforward Republican. And people say she has a real chance. So now I have to vote. Just in case it will make a difference.
So out to the mailbox I go. To retrieve my mail-in-ballot. I hold my nose. Fill in the ovals. And get it out of my house and into the mailbox as fast as possible.
Jane Fonda, Samuel L. Jackson, and other Hollywood stars have backed Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass in her bid for reelection.
The post Samuel L. Jackson Among Hollywood Celebrities Backing Karen Bass Over Socialist Nithya Raman. for L.A. Mayor appeared first on Breitbart.
Leftists and the Western liberal media rushed to congratulate radical socialist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Sunday over his alleged victory in Brazil in the second round of the presidential election against Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the right-leaning son of a convicted former Brazilian president now under house arrest.
Behind this mad rush to legitimize what could be Lula's fourth nonconsecutive term is not only desperation on the part of liberals to halt a rightward shift in South America but incredible uncertainty over whether the election was itself legitimate.
'What took place is simply inexplicable.'
After all, there was high-level meddling in the final hours of the election — meddling executed at the request of the Lula campaign and that may have had a profound impact on the outcome.
His former boss' biddingCristiano Zanin long served as Lula's personal lawyer, defending the socialist against corruption charges and even helping him get out of jail in 2019.
Zanin — whose wife is the daughter of a former Lula lawyer — was rewarded for his efforts. Lula nominated him to the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil, and Zanin was sworn into office in August 2023.
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Wagner Meier/Getty Images
Lula, a Beijing-friendly leftist, lost to Bolsonaro in the first round on Oct. 4, 47.03% to 45.16%. And though he was apparently in the lead early on Sunday, Bolsonaro managed to overtake him — at least temporarily.
Bolsonaro was, however, kneecapped around the time polling stations around the country were set to close when Zanin ordered the polling stations to remain open for another two hours.
While Bolsonaro had asked the election court for more time in a handful of regions where voters were affected by nasty weather — including the swing state of Minas Gerais — the Lula campaign demanded extended voting times nationwide, including in Bahia, a pro-Lula stronghold, reported Bloomberg.
The Lula campaign suggested that an extension was needed in part because of alleged voter suppression by pro-Bolsonaro mayors.
Zanin obliged his former boss with a universal extension even though: results from 1,225 polling sections had reportedly already been published by the Superior Election Court, some polling stations were reportedly already closed, and some stations' voting machines had been irreversibly shut down.
According to the TSE, the Superior Election Court of Brazil, Lula secured over 4.4 million more votes than Bolsonaro and won the election 51.79%-48.21%.
Illegitimate?Bolsonaro rejected the outcome of the election and indicated that he will pursue an annulment of it in light of the last-minute rule-change by one of "Lula's friends."
As relayed by state media, Bolsonaro told reporters outside his campaign headquarters, "It is impossible to recognize the election results given the circumstances under which these events unfolded. We will engage our legal team and seek the annulment of this election. We are not here to play games. I will not accept the rules being changed in the middle of the game — once again, by Lula’s friends on the Supreme Federal Court," according to a translation.
The right-wing challenger emphasized that "what happened today was not normal. In fact, it was unacceptable."
Rogério Marinho, Bolsonaro's campaign chief, said that Zanin's decision was an "unfeasible action to disrupt the process of an election that they already lost at the ballot box," according to a translation.
Bolsonaro further said:
For the first time in history, a Supreme Court justice — who is also a former lawyer for Lula — issued a unilateral ruling at the request of a former law partner, changing the rules of the game while the game was already underway. At 5:01 PM, Justice Zanin — who is not even a member of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) — bypassed the specialized electoral judiciary and issued a decision extending the voting period by two hours. This had never happened before in the history of Brazil. There was a complete breakdown of equal treatment among Brazilians in different cities and states. I will never know how many votes I might have received in a state where the polls were not reopened. What took place is simply inexplicable.The president of the Superior Electoral Court, Judge Kassio Nunes Marques, reinforced Bolsonaro's characterization, stating that Zanin's last-minute rule was legally groundless and unprecedented.
Nunes Marques said that there was "no regulation authorizing any extension" and that "never in the history of the TSE has there been any extension," according to a translation.
Despite these admissions, Nunes Marques defended the final result, stating, "There was no alteration resulting from the judicial decision. ... We have absolute security regarding the entire electoral process."
Raquel Machado, a professor at the Federal University of Ceará, told the New York Times that Bolsonaro can push for either a technical audit to determine whether the outcome was affected by unequal voting conditions or an abuse-of-power case through the TSE's inspector general, which could result in Lula's disqualification.
After claiming victory, Lula told supporters in Sao Paulo that "it was democracy that made this happen," according to the Guardian.
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