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Did CNN Air a Staged Migrant Crossing of the Rio Grande?
Link to tweet
Tweet text:
Michael Tae Sweeney
@mtsw
Customs and Border Protection is producing staged propaganda to try to embarrass the elected officials they supposedly work for. Our media is stupid enough to fall for it.
Did CNN Air a Staged Migrant Crossing of the Rio Grande?
An unusual video has been flagged by activists as deliberately manufactured to present a story of a border crisis, possibly with the participation of the Border Patrol.
prospect.org
11:06 AM · Mar 22, 2021
Michael Tae Sweeney
@mtsw
Customs and Border Protection is producing staged propaganda to try to embarrass the elected officials they supposedly work for. Our media is stupid enough to fall for it.
Did CNN Air a Staged Migrant Crossing of the Rio Grande?
An unusual video has been flagged by activists as deliberately manufactured to present a story of a border crisis, possibly with the participation of the Border Patrol.
prospect.org
11:06 AM · Mar 22, 2021
https://prospect.org/justice/did-cnn-air-staged-migrant-crossing-of-the-rio-grande/
CNN correspondent Ed Lavandera gestures toward a puported migrant crossing of the Rio Grande under way at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The scene starts out serenely, as CNN national correspondent Ed Lavandera and crew motor by boat down the Rio Grande near the city of Hidalgo, Texas, as the sun sets. But soon, the idyllic setting gives way.
“That’s when we stumble across a group of migrants loading into a raft,” Lavandera says in the clip. He’s heard speaking with the migrants in Spanish to ease the tension. In the video, shot on March 11 and aired the next day, a group of migrants, including children, board a tiny raft and are led across by a man in a black ski mask and camouflage clothing. The migrants wear clean-looking surgical masks and life vests.
“The Rio Grande Valley has been ground zero for the latest surge in migration and here you see the operation unfolding right in front of us,” said Lavandera. “After the first raft crosses, the magnitude of this moment reveals itself. Dozens of migrants emerge and walk down to the river’s edge. You can see that this is a serious operation.”
He narrates what he describes as a “highly organized system,” with the raft taking at least six trips across the river. “Scenes like this are escalating in the Rio Grande Valley,” Lavandera says.
But the scene may not be all that it appears to be. Immigrant rights advocates and others claim that the footage was staged, potentially with the cooperation of the Border Patrol. CNN was warned that the clip appeared to be a fabrication before it aired, but the network decided to run it anyway. A similar clip that appears to show the same or a similar trafficking incident from another angle was shared across right-wing media and even linked to on the social media accounts of members of Congress. This clip went viral among immigration opponents, and is helping to fuel the story of an out-of-control border. The video—legitimized on mainstream media—easily fit into that narrative. Now a series of charges and counter-charges have demonstrated the radioactive politics of immigration.
*snip*
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