NBC News issued an embarrassing, albeit woefully inadequate, correction on a story in which they claimed ICE agents in Massachusetts essentially used an illegal immigrant's five-year-old autistic daughter to lure him out of his home.
The outlet ran the story based on video and statements provided by the mother. The reporter involved and his editors seemed to lack the necessary curiosity to contact officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for their version of the events before hitting publish.
As RedState Editor Bob Hoge reported Tuesday, the story at first blush seemed horrific. The initial story claimed that agents "held a 5-year-old autistic girl outside her Massachusetts home to pressure her father to surrender to authorities last week."
It goes on to convey an ominous tone as NBC suggests the girl was "encircled" and "surrounded" by "several male law enforcement agents."
"Oh no! That is awful, despicable, inhuman. These dastardly ICE agents aren’t trying to enforce immigration law; they’re trying to terrorize Americans," Hoge writes. "That would be the case—if the story were true."
Alas, the entire premise got nuked by Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, who reported that the father actually abandoned the girl in the car and ICE agents notified police to rescue her from said abandonment.
With the narrative thoroughly contradicted, NBC issued its "correction."
Shot.
— Tricia McLaughlin (@TriciaOhio) September 24, 2025
Chaser.
Maybe @NBCNews should have asked @DHSgov before propagating these smears. pic.twitter.com/I92yzy7PJh
READ MORE: ICE Holds 5-Year Autistic Girl Hostage to Bait Innocent Father! Wait... Did They Really?
Thanks for the correction, NBC. We guess. But here you have a blatant example of media bias 101 and why legacy outlets have absolutely no problem running stories before they have all the facts.
Why? Because the original story had at least 2 million views by the time McLaughlin posted a screenshot. The corrected version, which NBC News posted as a reply after deleting the original (which will help suppress its reach), has just over 35,000 views so far.
Narrative achieved. Correction, largely ignored.
What's worse is that a one-sentence addendum to the story does little justice to the extent to which the outlet rewrote the story in several significant areas. Take a look at the original in the Wayback Machine.
The entire premise of the first paragraph is altered from "agents held a 5-year-old autistic girl outside her Massachusetts home to pressure her father to surrender to authorities" to "a 5-year-old girl, whose mother says is autistic, while agents attempt to arrest her father."
They didn't even confirm that the girl was autistic. Only took the mother's word. But in the original, they reported it as fact. It gets worse from there.
The initial report reads:
The video appears to then show authorities trying to coax the girl's father out of his Leominster, Massachusetts home.
The amended version:
The video appears to show authorities outside the home communicating with the father.
Perhaps a concession on some level that the mother might not have been honest with her assessment of what transpired, the newly printed version actually changes one of her quotes.
The mother told NBC that her husband "managed to run back into the parking lot of my house, but they grabbed" their daughter.
The new version states that the mother said her husband "managed to run back into the parking lot of my house,” but added that her daughter "as a result was left with the agents."
We went from the big, bad ICE agents "grabbed" a toddler to whoopsie, the Dad accidentally left her behind as he was trying to outrun authorities.
So no, ICE agents did not use the poor girl to "bait" or "lure" or "coax" the man out of his home. They did not "grab" her to do so. In fact, McLaughlin's statement, which NBC never bothered to obtain before printing their first version, makes it clear who the bad guy is here.
The suspected illegal, identified as Edward Hip Mejia, according to McLaughlin, “ignored law enforcement emergency lights to pull over and drove back to his house."
"He fled from the car, gave officers the double middle finger, and darted inside his house. He abandoned his 5-year-old daughter in the car," she continued. "Officers helped rescue the child and called local police to report the abandonment.”
That's a hell of an angle to leave out of your story.
No matter, millions of left-wing rubes saw the original and walked away having their belief that ICE is evil confirmed. Only thousands saw they had been lied to.
Hours later, a sniper opened fire on an ICE facility in Dallas, an attack that left two people dead and one critically wounded. The FBI confirmed that anti-ICE messages had been written on the shell cases.
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