Buck Sexton: Press takes side on current immigration debate

By Buck Sexton
Opinion Contributor

So, when is someone’s arrest a national news story? Well, if you saw what happened over the weekend, you know that a man was arrested in California, and the initial story was that he was taken by ICE, Immigration, and Customs Enforcement, as he was on the way to the hospital with his pregnant wife.

This immediately generated all kinds of outrage. This was a front-page, top of the website kind of headline. Folks were saying, how could ICE be so cruel? This man was trying to take his wife to the hospital to have her baby, this must have been an emergency. Why would they ever do such a thing?

And then more facts came out. We found out that this man was, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wanted for murder. Pretty serious charge. Oh, and also, the wife was pregnant and on her way to the hospital, but to have a cesarean section, which had been scheduled, wasn’t quite as imminent as initially reported. But then there’s a bigger question.

Once we got this information, we can look and say, hold on a second, if this wasn’t an illegal alien, because that is, in fact, the technical legal term for a person in the United States without legal cause to do so. When this person became a national news story, a lot of folks look at this and said, hold on, if an everyday American was arrested on the way to the hospital with his wife, especially if he had a murder warrant, nobody would even give it a second thought. It wouldn’t be a national news story. Wouldn’t even be a local news story.

What’s different here? It’s hard not to feel like the press has taken a side in the current immigration debate, and one that is increasingly open-borders. They view illegal aliens in this country as people deserving of special sympathy, even special treatment, not just in their own articles and news shows, but from the very government itself. This is gonna continue to cause a massive political divide in this country.

We’ll see what ends up happening in the midterms because of it. But, in the meantime, it would be good if at least the press could be honest about the fact that they’re not just reporting on illegal immigration in this country. They’ve taken a side, and it’s squarely against the rule of law.

Buck Sexton is the co-host of “Rising,” Hill.TV’s morning news show.

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