Kristi Noem's Department of Homeland Security blasted The New York Times on Monday for its reporting on a migrant who was convicted of murder in 1996 and recently deported to Africa.
The Times ran the headline, "Man Who'd Served His Time In U.S. Is Deported to an African Prison." The first sentence of the story notably mentions that the man, Orville Etoria, shot and killed a man in Brooklyn nearly 30 years ago and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
Etoria is a Jamaican citizen with legal residency in the United States, the report added. After his release four years ago, he was allowed by immigration authorities to remain in the country. He earned a bachelor's degree while in prison and was working towards a master's in divinity, according to the report. He got a job, but has since been ordered by a judge to be deported to a prison in the kingdom of Eswatini in southern Africa, where he and four others have no citizenship. The Trump administration claimed their home countries wouldn't take them back, though Jamaican officials disputed the claim.
DHS unloaded on the Times' framing of the report, but immigration experts took a different opinion.
"DISGRACEFUL AND DISGUSTING! The failing @NYTimes is peddling another disgusting sob story for a criminal illegal alien.
Orville Etoria was convicted of MURDER. It is absolutely revolting that the New York Times is actively defending convicted murderers over American citizens. DHS will continue enforcing the law at full speed—without apology," DHS wrote on X on Monday.
Immigration rights attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, however, rebutted that the Times report notes Etoria's crime in the first sentence.
"But I guess in the Orwellian world of this admin, it's 'disgraceful and disgusting' to question why it is that a man from Jamaica who finished serving a murder sentence 4 years ago was deported to the tiny Kingdom of Eswatini," he said.
In a separate post, he added, "The official position of the Trump administration is that to even acknowledging (sic) the basic humanity of a person subject to deportation is to be 'DISGRACEFUL AND DISGUSTING.' At its core, they don't view these people as human beings, but as props to be used for social media."
Reichlin-Melnick concluded that "whether you would want to live next to him is a different question than should he be indefinitely imprisoned in Eswatini."