{"id":21219,"date":"2026-07-14T10:47:47","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T18:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/?p=21219"},"modified":"2026-07-14T10:47:48","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T18:47:48","slug":"media-sob-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2026\/07\/14\/media-sob-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Media: Sob stories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Did this really happen? Kind of. This post was seen on X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here is a Grok AI assessment of the post<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tweet is mostly true but misleading or exaggerated in some details.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Key facts:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
    \n
  • NYT homepage\/feature coverage of a long-term US resident facing deportation.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • He had lived in the US a long time (since childhood\/teen years), much of it incarcerated.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Deportation came after release from a prison sentence for murder.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Misleading:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
      \n
    • The murder mention was not buried at the end.<\/strong>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.).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Not exactly “19 of those years” or exactly 20 years total post-teen arrival.<\/strong> 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.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

      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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      The media has an odd policy of framing sob stories about illegal immigrant deportations – even when the deportee has served 25 years for murder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21221,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21219\/revisions\/21221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}