Following up on a theme:

Today’s center, above the fold, headline on the New York Times front page:

Migrants Hide, Fearing Capture On “Any Corner”

Emotional message sent: Poor, innocent immigrants whose only crime is being born in another country are trembling in fear as they are subjected to a police state style round-up evoking Nazi Germany, in a demonstration of nationalistic, xenophobic hate!  And that is exactly the message the headline is intended to send.  There is no mention of “illegal” in the headline, despite the fact that if legal migrants are in fear of “capture,” it is only because they have been reading the recent misleading headlines in the New York Times. The statement that migrants are hiding and fearing capture is deceptive and untrue. It begins…

No going to church, no going to the store. No doctor’s appointments for some, no school for others. No driving, period — not when a broken taillight could deliver the driver to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

It is happening in the Central Valley of California, where undocumented immigrants pick the fields for survival wages but are keeping their children home from school; on Staten Island, where fewer day laborers haunt street corners in search of work; in West Phoenix’s Isaac School District, where 13 Latino students have dropped out in the past two weeks; and in the horse country of northern New Jersey, where one of the many undocumented grooms who muck out the stables is thinking of moving back to Honduras….

The word “illegally” makes its first appearance in paragraph three, 121 words into the article. The news story—again, this is the front page, and it is presented as news— is written to be read against a background of mournful violins. Poor, poor beset upon, persecuted migrants! The Times’ assignment of villains follows…

“For Mr. Trump’s supporters and longtime advocates of stricter immigration enforcement, they are a welcome move toward restoring law and order to a system that they say offered no deterrent to entering the country illegally. Undocumented immigrants, in their view, have filled jobs that belong to Americans, drained public resources and skipped the line for visas on which others waited for years.”

Wait…what does the Times mean  by”they say  offered no deterrent to entering the country illegally”? There has been no deterrent to entering the country illegally. There are currently even incentives to enter the country, such as setting up one’s children to be “Dreamers.” By adding the last sentence, phrased in pejorative terms, the Times neatly buries the only relevant issue. Illegal immigrants are illegal, that’s all. It doesn’t matter if they smell like roses,  walk old ladies across the street and work like Trojans 24/7 to send money back home to their starving parents, and go about life in the U.S. without so much as spitting on the sidewalk. They are here illegally.  They should fear arrest and deportation.  Allowing them to avoid such fear eliminates any deterrent to enter the country illegally. They have no right to be here.  They have no right to be free of the threat of arrest. They violated U.S. immigration laws. Violating laws have to have consequences, or there is no rule of law.

Simple as that.

Here is what an ethical law-breaker does to avoid this fear of “capture.” He or she goes to authorities, admits the wrongdoing, and is accountable. No fear of “capture” then! No more reason to hide! Hiding to avoid the law is the act of a bad citizen, as well as a bad aspiring citizen.

Is it too much to expect the mainstream news media to convey the basic facts of law and reality, without soaking them in propaganda, emotion and deception?

Yes.