The Trump administration has been in full-on propaganda mode on many fronts, but particularly when it comes to its mass deportation agents—and it’s easy to see why. Thousands of migrant kids have been forcibly separated from parents in recent weeks, leading to mass protests across the country, protests in front of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities, and even calls from within ICE itself to have the agency reformed.
The public tide is turning and the demand for accountability is spreading, and the administration knows this. “Sen. Kamala Harris, why are you supporting the animals of MS-13?” the White House Twitter account tweeted this week. “You must not know what ICE really does.” Other tweets from the White House—no doubt some sort of misuse of government accounts—targeted Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Mark Pocan, both of whom have called for ICE to be abolished.
The propaganda also came from official government accounts of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which tweeted that “DHS, CBP, and ICE will be sharing stories of the brave men and women who put lives on the line every day with the sole objective of protecting our nation … make sure to follow to see stories that have not been widely reported.” But there’s stories and people they won’t be talking about, like Claudia Patricia Gómez González.
Last May, 20-year-old Gómez González said goodbye to her loved ones and trekked from her home country of Guatemala to the U.S. She was in search of better opportunities. In Guatemala, her dad Gilberto later said, "She looked, looked and nothing. I believe that's the reason why she decided to pursue the American dream.” But she wouldn’t live to see the American dream, because she was shot in the head and killed by a Border Patrol agent, after crossing into the Rio Bravo area of Texas.
Border Patrol initially claimed she and others ambushed an agent with “blunt objects,” but this was disputed by an eyewitness. "The girl was in the grass and trees,” said Marta Martinez. “To me she was hiding." In a follow-up statement, Border Patrol dropped any claim of “blunt objects,” changed their description of her from “assailant” to "member of the group,” and then cancelled a press conference. The agent who killed her “is on administrative leave, per agency policy.”
Another story DHS won’t tweet about are six orphaned children in central California, left without parents last March after they crashed their car in their attempt to evade ICE agents.
Farmworkers Santo Hilario Garcia and Marcelina Garcia Profecto, according to the Los Angeles Times, “lost control of their SUV when it veered into a dirt shoulder. The vehicle overturned and eventually hit a power pole.” They were declared dead at the scene.
In the end, it wasn’t just clear that ICE had chased the wrong target—they were actually looking for Santo’s brother, Celestino—but ICE was lying about chasing them in the first place, with the Delano Police Department saying that agents gave them statements that contradicted surveillance footage. The department forwarded a report to the Kern County District Attorney’s Office requesting criminal charges against the two agents, but the DA declined.
ICE could have left these kids alone. They could have decided that this was enough grief, caused by them, for this family. But instead, ICE then targeted their uncle Celestino, their next closest relative, for deportation. “Celestino Hilario Garcia had just gotten into his car to go to work when ICE agents arrived and yelled at him to put his hands up, his wife said,” as reported by the Huffington Post. “She and her youngest child, a 4-year-old girl, watched it happen while the other children were still asleep, she said.”
"ICE already contributed to the deaths of the parents of these six children who are now orphans,” said UFW Foundation leader Diana Tellefson Torres. “Can ICE be more callous in visiting even greater anguish upon this family that has already suffered so much? How much crueler can Donald Trump’s immigration policies become?”
ICE won’t mention Pablo Villavicencio either. The delivery man was turned over to ICE after taking a food order to a military base in Brooklyn, New York, and faced imminent deportation despite having no criminal record and being in the process of adjusting his legal status through his U.S. citizen wife, Sandra. A judge has temporarily halted Villavicencio’s deportation, but he continues to languish in detention. "Let him go back to his daughters and me," Sandra said during a press conference. "Every day my daughters ask, ‘Why is daddy not with us?’ I demand ICE to do the right thing."
While Sandra and her daughters have some hope of being reunited with Pablo, others will never see their loved ones again. Gómez González’s body was returned to Guatemala in late May, and she was buried a few days later. “I want justice. Why did they do this to her? They should have just sent her back home,” her mother Lidia sobbed. “Why did they do this? They killed her. You are with God. I know you are with God.”