A few days ago, a story was making the rounds on social media alleging an 82-year-old Chilean man died in ICE custody.
Here’s the story, shared by MSNBC/Bulwark’s Sam Stein:
What are we doing?https://t.co/FAOXXHwylb
— Sam Stein (@samstein) July 20, 2025
And here’s what the paper, the Morning Call of Allentown, Pennsylvania, reported:
Relatives of 82-year-old Allentown resident Luis Leon are headed to a Guatemalan hospital Saturday in hopes of reuniting with the man they say disappeared without a trace into the American immigration system a month ago — and who, for a time, they thought was dead.
The last time anyone in the family saw Leon was June 20, when he went with his wife to a Philadelphia immigration office to have his lost green card replaced.
There, the family says, he was handcuffed by two officers, who led him away without explanation. His wife, who speaks little English, was left behind and kept in the building for 10 hours until she was released to her granddaughter, the family says.
You’ll be not surprised to learn this story was a hoax.
NEW: It appears another hoax has been attempted. Family members of an 82-year-old Chilean man in PA went to the media claiming ICE arrested him while renewing a green card in Philly, that he died in ICE custody, then that he was secretly deported to Guatemala. The story went… pic.twitter.com/a1jRXT6qBu
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) July 22, 2025
The post reads:
It appears to have been all made up by the family, which has since gone dark and stopped responding to the press. Here’s what happened since the story first ran in The Morning Call, an Allentown, PA newspaper.
– Records in Chile show a man with his same name and date of birth died in Chile in 2019.
– Guatemala says they have no record of him being deported to their country.
– DHS says there is no record of him appearing at any green card appointment in the Philly area, and they say ICE never arrested him.
– DHS says they never deported him, and their only record of him entering the US is in 2015 from Chile via the visa waiver program, not an asylum grant from the 1980s as the family claimed.
– His granddaughter claimed he was sick in a Guatemalan hospital with pneumonia after ICE deported him, and that he was traumatized (after first claiming he was dead). A doctor at the hospital she claimed he was at says there is no record of him being there.
Link to updated story via the Morning Call, which DHX is calling ‘another hoax designed to demonize ICE’: http://mcall.com/2025/07/21/luis-leon-allentown-grandfather-story-hoax-ice-says/
The media ran with this story, of course, doing the bare minimum to verify its claims were, in fact, true.
DHS press release, which calls the story “journalistic malpractice:https://t.co/Z88d3jiT9D
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) July 22, 2025
That’s putting it mildly.
And here is the Morning Call’s updated reporting, which includes all of the discrepancies that have stacked up:https://t.co/X9zl8zwyNX
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) July 22, 2025
How nice of them.
This post amplifying the claims in the initial story got 8 million hits:https://t.co/ZayXdqcgnh
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) July 22, 2025
And the updated story by the Morning Call currently has 80K views.
Which is the point. The lie is halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on.
So we can look forward to a lot more of this kind of thing
— Sour Patch Lyds ن (@sourpatchlyds) July 22, 2025
Of course.
The problem with this is, normal people are eventually going to figure out the game here and ignore these stories outright.
Heh.
That story never added up from the moment I read it. And not the first hoax Brian Allen has spread on this platform.
— Mark Ashworth (@marklarflash) July 22, 2025
Won’t be the last, we fear.
Not shocked.
Hope everyone deletes their tweets decrying this thing that never happened and gets a grip https://t.co/rEZnd1M3hH
— Jennifer Van Laar (@jenvanlaar) July 22, 2025
They will not get a grip.
Oh wow. Saw this everywhere a few days ago. https://t.co/Ch6zH4EvX2
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) July 22, 2025
And how many retractions have we seen? Not nearly as many.
Like every other story promoted by immigration advocates, this too proved to be complete BS https://t.co/5IIuvfqyok
— Mark 🥓 🥓 (@PitmasterMark69) July 22, 2025
They’re doing more harm to their cause than they realize.
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