Trump’s immigration agency mocked deported father’s sexuality in extraordinary attack.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s immigration officials sparked outrage with a juvenile “Fake & Gay!” attack on an evicted father who critics say violated federal privacy laws and could have put his life in danger.
The grotesque outburst came after the CBS broadcast 60 minutes revealed how Moussa Diawara, 57, married with two teenagers, was deported from the United States in July.
Moussa Diawara is now separated from his family.
He was sent to Ghana, a country to which he had no ties, after a U.S. immigration judge ruled in 2012 that he could not be deported to his native Mali because he was being persecuted there.
The program, which aired Sunday, featured Diawara, an Uber driver from Houston, Texas, who had lived in the United States for 25 years and had no criminal record, speaking via video to his distraught wife, Barbara, and their two children, Corey, 16, and Chloe, 12, who are U.S. citizens.
Rather than simply disputing the network’s findings, the official ICE X account posted on Monday: “Fake & Gay! »
ICE’s juvenile message sparked outrage.
The agency said Diawara’s asylum application showed he told authorities he was gay and feared persecution in his home country, and accused him of immigration fraud.
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He published his insults following an equally extraordinary admission by the Department of Homeland Security’s general counsel, James Percival, who appeared in the 60 minutes investigation. “I withdrew his file,” Percival boasted on X, saying Diawara cited his homosexuality as the reason he feared being deported to Mali.
Percival used this claim to highlight widespread abuses of the immigration system, although neither he nor ICE have publicly established that Diawara committed fraud. A married man with children can be gay or bisexual.
Like his former boss, Kristi Noem, James Percival also seems to enjoy a bit of police play in front of the cameras when he’s not calling out gays on social media.
Both posts were in response to a Fox News reporter who obtained Diawara’s documents and shared them online.
In it, Diawara writes: “Although I was born a boy, things appeared differently to me because I already had feminine behaviors and feelings. I was more comfortable being intimate with boys rather than girls.”
Describing his life after arriving in the United States, he said: “Since I came to the United States, I have had the opportunity to express my feelings to men without any embarrassment or reservation. »
Fox News did not reveal who made the asylum request to them. The Daily Beast asked the network and DHS if this came from inside the department.
But the administration’s decision to release details of a confidential immigration dossier has sparked furious accusations of illegal conduct. David J. Bier, a horrified immigration policy expert, accused the officials of violating the Privacy Act, which generally restricts federal agencies from publicly disclosing personal information contained in government records.
Moussa Diawara’s family speaks to him via video from their home in the United States. “We feel really empty without him,” said his 16-year-old son, Corey.
Bier added that authorities could reject asylum applications without revealing their contents to the world, calling the disclosure “monstrous” and “totally inexcusable.” He warned that “if his life was not in danger before, it is now.”
In another post, Bier said Percival potentially put Diawara in danger, whether the claims about his sexuality were accurate or not. “Why? Sick,” he concluded.
Federal regulations governing the confidentiality of asylum applications generally prohibit revealing information contained in asylum applications without the consent of the applicant. Certain exceptions, including disclosures authorized by the Secretary of DHS, exist.
It was not clear whether DHS authorized or obtained permission for the release of Diawara’s records.
A DHS spokesperson said: “There is no violation of privacy. Existing legal authorities grant DHS discretion to release this information, and that discretion has been properly invoked here.” It did not explain how Fox obtained the article.
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