U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is disputing the way CBS News’ “60 Minutes” portrayed the deportation of Moussa Diawara, a Malian national who had lived in Texas, saying the network left out details of his past asylum application.
The “60 Minutes” segment, which aired Sunday, featured Diawara’s wife and two children describing life since his deportation in July. “It feels really empty without him,” his son Corey Diawara told the program. CBS described Diawara as a Texas father who had lived in the U.S. for 25 years with no criminal record and was finishing a night shift as an Uber driver when immigration agents detained him. The network said he was deported first to Ghana, a country where he had no ties, and then to Mali, despite a prior ruling by a U.S. immigration judge that he could not be sent there due to a likely risk of persecution.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, that earlier finding stemmed from a claim Diawara made in a request for withholding of removal, in which he said he feared persecution in Mali because he is homosexual. ICE highlighted the discrepancy between that claim and Diawara’s marriage and two children in a post on social media, writing that he “now faces allegations of immigration FRAUD after his asylum application surfaced, revealing that he claimed to be a HOMOSEXUAL man who feared persecution in Mali.”
Fox News reported it obtained documents from Diawara’s refugee application in which he wrote that he had “female behaviors and feelings” and “was more comfortable being intimate with boys rather than with girls.” The application also stated, “Since I came to the USA I had the possibilities to express my feelings to men without any embarrassment no reserve,” according to Fox News.
CBS News reported that Diawara entered the United States on a tourist visa, overstayed it, and later applied for refugee protection arguing he would face persecution in Mali. That application, as described by CBS, cited his conversion to Christianity in a Muslim-majority country facing an Islamist insurgency, and noted he has no criminal record. CBS’s reporting on the asylum claim did not mention the homosexuality-based persecution claim cited by DHS and reported by Fox News.
Diawara’s deportation, and the broader enforcement actions that led to it, have become a flashpoint in the ongoing national debate over immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. ICE’s public criticism of the CBS report centers on what it characterizes as a one-sided account that omitted material facts bearing on the legitimacy of Diawara’s original protection claim.
CBS News has not publicly responded to ICE’s criticism as of this writing.
