NBC News Deletes Story After DHS Response
What began as yet another attempt by a major news outlet to vilify ICE has now been thoroughly dismantled by hard evidence and direct statements from the Department of Homeland Security.
NBC News ran with a sensational narrative: that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents used a five-year-old autistic girl as “bait” to lure her illegal immigrant father out of hiding. But the facts — inconvenient though they may be to NBC’s preferred framing — tell a very different story.
According to DHS, the incident in question didn’t involve ICE “using” anyone. It involved a criminal illegal alien, Edwards Hip Mejia, with a documented history of domestic abuse and strangulation charges, who abandoned his own daughter in a car as he tried to flee law enforcement. Rather than cooperate with authorities, Mejia bolted back into his house, reportedly giving agents the double middle finger as he left his five-year-old child behind.
.@NBCNews — these smears are SICK.
Our ICE agents NEVER used a 5-year-old girl as ‘bait.’
The criminal illegal alien target of the operation—with previous arrests for domestic abuse, strangulation, and vandalizing property—ABANDONED HIS OWN CHILD in a car.
Edwards Hip Mejia, a… pic.twitter.com/p0Bedk5p6Q
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) September 23, 2025
And what did the ICE agents do? According to both DHS and Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, they rescued the child, called local police to report the abandonment, and made sure she was returned safely to her family. That’s not “bait.” That’s basic human decency, regardless of the uniform they wear.
McLaughlin didn’t mince words in calling NBC’s framing “a disgusting smear” and blamed this kind of dishonest coverage for the sharp rise in assaults against law enforcement, which DHS says have increased by 1000%.
When a federal agency has to clarify — publicly and forcefully — that their officers don’t manipulate autistic children to catch fugitives, something is deeply broken in the media ecosystem.
This isn’t the first time NBC and similar outlets have tried to spin immigration enforcement into a tale of cruelty. In July, Fox News’ Bill Melugin debunked another inflammatory story when a family claimed an illegal immigrant died in ICE custody, only for it to emerge he had been quietly deported. These narratives grab headlines — and clicks — but unravel under even the lightest scrutiny.
The video NBC leaned on — circulated by Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra — showed agents near the girl, but failed to provide any context. NBC’s own article eventually concedes, near the bottom and well after the damage is done, that the girl was reunited with her family and is “doing well.”