Did this really happen? Kind of. This post was seen on X.

Here is a Grok AI assessment of the post

A convicted murder served 25 years in prison, received a deportation order in 2009, and was released on parole in the U.S. in 2021.

The NY Times did framed it as a long time resident in the US had been deported – without clearly highlighting that most of that time had been spent in prison after being convicted of murder.

The tweet is mostly true but misleading or exaggerated in some details.

The New York Times did publish an article (Sept. 1, 2025) about Orville Etoria, a Jamaican national and former green card holder, who was deported in July 2025 under the Trump administration’s policies. He had lived in the US for decades (arriving as a child/teen, per reports), served ~25 years in prison for a 1996 murder conviction in Brooklyn (shooting a man in the head), received a deportation order in 2009, was released on parole in 2021, and was allowed to remain with check-ins until the recent crackdown. He was sent to a prison in Eswatini (a third country) along with others.

Key facts:

• NYT homepage/feature coverage of a long-term US resident facing deportation.
• He had lived in the US a long time (since childhood/teen years), much of it incarcerated.
• Deportation came after release from a prison sentence for murder.

Misleading:

• The murder mention was not buried at the end.The article’s opening sentence states: “After fatally shooting a man in the head in Brooklyn in 1996, Orville Etoria was convicted of murder and given a prison sentence of 25 years to life.” It then discusses his time served, rehabilitation, etc. The DHS and critics called it a “sob story” for focusing on his post-release life/education while downplaying the crime’s severity (and his additional record: armed robbery, weapons, etc.).
• Not exactly “19 of those years” or exactly 20 years total post-teen arrival. He served ~25 years for the murder (convicted ~1997, released 2021). Broader timeline details vary slightly across reports, but the core “longtime resident with major prison time” holds.

There is a problem in media reporting which write sympathetic stories but buries past criminal activity. I have seen this many times in the Oregonian – for example, a story focused on two grandparents and chose to self deport. Buried in the story was that they had entered the U.S. illegally, been deported previously, hired a “mule” to get them back into the U.S., and had been convicted of several crimes. The tone of the story was one of sympathy – doing their best to hide that they were not quite the angels presented in the top 3/4ths of the story.

The media deserves criticism for their lame attempts at sob stories. To the media’s perspective, we should have open borders – there is no reason anyone should be excluded from the United States.