Charlamagne says media left him clueless about key detail in 2-year-old’s deportation

Radio host Charlamagne Tha God called out the media on Monday for neglecting to mention that a two-year-old deported by President Donald Trump’s administration was sent back with her mother, who was not a legal citizen.

News outlets reported that the Trump administration deported three U.S. citizen children, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio on “Meet the Press” Sunday criticized the coverage as “misleading” due to focusing on the citizen children rather than their noncitizen mothers. When journalist Morgyn Wood discussed the two-year-old’s case on the “Front Page News” segment of “The Breakfast Club” and mentioned the toddler’s mother was not a citizen, Charlamagne said he was unaware of that fact despite consuming news of the incident.

WATCH:

“You know what, Morgyn, I did not know. I did not know until you said it about the two-year-old. I mean, I knew about the two-year-old getting deported, but all the news reports just kept saying that a two-year-old got deported,” Charlamagne said. “I didn’t know that the mother had got deported because she wasn’t a citizen … I didn’t know that.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported the illegal immigrant mothers of U.S. citizen children ages 7, 4 and 2 on Friday, The Washington Post reported. Government officials assert that the two mothers of the three children made the choice to bring them back to Honduras with them, according to the Post.

“It is common that parents want to be removed with their children,” Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin told the Post.

“Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker cited the Post’s reporting in her Sunday segment with Rubio. The Post’s headline for its Saturday report was “Three U.S. citizens, ages 2, 4 and 7, swiftly deported from Louisiana.”

“On the headline, that’s a misleading headline. Three U.S. citizens ages 4, 7 and 2 were not deported. Their mothers who were illegally in this country were deported,” the secretary of state told Welker. “The children went with their mothers. The children are U.S. citizens, they can come back into the United States if their father, or someone here, wants to assume them.”

“But, ultimately who was deported was their mothers who were here illegally. The children just went with their mother,” he continued. “It’s not like, you guys make it sound like ICE agents kicked down the door and grabbed the 2-year-old and threw him on an airplane. That’s misleading. That’s just not true.”

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