Stories of extremes in the media serve no good

As with so many anecdote-based, click-bait media articles these days, it began with a headline about an innocent victim. On July 15th, The Guardian published a dramatic piece shrieking "Nobody is safe" and headlined: "Irish tourist jailed by ICE for months after overstaying US visit by three days."

It was quickly republished and recycled across the media. The Irish Times picked it up the next day: "Irish tech worker detained by immigration agents in US for 100 days: ‘I didn’t know when I was getting home.'" A sympathetic subtitle explained that he had overstayed his visa by three days due to a medical episode that left him unable to travel.

The story, now fully shaped, took on a viral life of its own, spreading to Joe.ie, the Irish Independent, the Daily Mail, and even something called Fodor’s Travel Guide. Each outlet told essentially the same version: a harmless Irish victim with health issues, an overstay of “just” three days, and a nightmare at the hands of Donald Trump’s heartless American immigration system.

But beneath this one-sided story lies a more complicated and more disturbing truth. One that the original reporter, Sam Levin, seemed uninterested in telling. Let’s start with the central character, known only as 'Thomas', a pseudonym granted by The Guardian allegedly out of fear that revealing his identity might subject him to “further consequences” from United States immigration authorities. This makes little sense as Thomas has already been deported. He is now safely home in Ireland, banned from re-entering the United States for ten years, so it’s unclear what danger he could still face.

According to 'Thomas', he was visiting his girlfriend in the United States on the 90-day visa waiver programme, but seriously injured his leg and was advised by a doctor not to fly for between eight to 12 weeks, fearing a blood clot. This duration seems quite excessive and would likely need to be supported by strong medical documentation to justify a visa overstay to immigration officials. 'Thomas' claimed he tried contacting the United States and Irish authorities to explain this and seek an extension but that no one ever replied.

Despite all this, the 35-year-old apparently assumed his doctor’s note would suffice, so he stayed on and visited his girlfriend’s family in Georgia. After what he describes as a “mental health episode” in a hotel room the couple shared, police were called and he was arrested and charged with falsely imprisoning his girlfriend. Though later released on bond, ICE agents picked him up and he so began a nearly 100-day torturous journey through America’s (deliberately?) awful immigration detention system.

Journalism requires questions, not just compassion. To be very clear: if what 'Thomas' says about the conditions in United States immigration jails is true, then that is cause for alarm and serious human-rights scrutiny. He reported being held in filthy, overcrowded facilities where he was given dirty mattresses, stained or ripped clothing, minimal toilet paper and very limited time outdoors. He described being frequently cold with only a thin blanket, eating poor-quality food he sometimes couldn’t identify and struggling to get medical care despite severe pain and mental health needs. In the federal prison, detainees were treated like criminal convicts, confined indoors for weeks without seeing the sky and left in confusion about their cases. ICE officials spoke Spanish and English, but Middle Eastern and North African detainees speaking neither were stuck in a state of confusion.

But here’s the issue: we are being asked to take the account of 'Thomas' on faith. The Guardian provides no corroborating evidence or attempts to confirm the arrest details, the doctor’s note, the visa extension attempts or if 'Thomas' ever bought a return ticket. They apparently didn’t contact the Irish Embassy in Washington (whose website affirms they “provide consular assistance to Irish citizens in emergencies and you can contact us if you need help”) to verify that ‘Thomas’ had ever contacted them.

More concerning still: the serious nature of the charge - falsely imprisoning his girlfriend - is mostly glossed over. She is quoted as saying she “did not support” the charge. But her strangely phrased rebuttal is not the same as saying the event didn’t happen. Police don’t usually arrest someone for mental health reasons alone, especially when concerned neighbours were worried enough about what they heard or saw 'Thomas' do to call 9-1-1.

Repeatedly, media coverage insists that 'Thomas' overstayed his visa by “just three days", but this is misleading. The Irishman claimed that as he had the “correct paperwork” (presumably the doctor’s note) he believed that he would be fine departing the United States after his visa deadline by “just a couple of days for medical reasons”, but we don’t know how long he would have stayed if ICE hadn’t picked him up and there is no mention of a booked return flight. This also ignores what triggered his detention. He wasn’t arrested at the airport trying to leave. He was arrested by police after a domestic incident and only then did immigration step in. The ‘three-days’ also infantilises him. Thomas is a 35-year-old father, a tech worker with access to information and resources. His belief that a doctor’s note about a two or three-month-old calf injury would exempt him from immigration rules was, at best, naive. At worst, it was reckless and stupid.

Lost in the dangerous laziness of how this story has been told there is a whole group of victimised people being ignored. It’s easy to sympathise with someone who looks like us, sounds like us and claims to have stumbled into injustice. But the true victims of US immigration enforcement are not heedless middle-class Irish tourists who will always return to their home in Ireland. They are the undocumented families from Guatemala and Honduras living under constant threat. They are the asylum seekers from Venezuela and Haiti. They are US citizens of colour who carry passports at all times in case they are wrongly detained. They risk being torn from their communities in sudden ICE raids, losing the only home they have known.

One Latina friend wrote to me today: “I’m actually in tears right now. I’ve never been more afraid to be brown in my life.” Of South American parents, she lived and worked in Los Angeles most of her life but moved recently to the North-East. 

“It’s really bad out here. I’m in the suburbs - wealthy - and ICE raids several times a day. I’m a US citizen and I’ve been carrying my passport for months. Yesterday they were just 900 feet away…” 

None of this is to suggest that 'Thomas' deserved what he experienced. No one innocent of a serious crime should be held for weeks in dehumanising conditions, especially after agreeing to deportation. But he is not a martyr or the symbol of a broken system. His story, while troubling, is not the main story that needs to be told right now. His experience happened under Joe Biden’s administration, but the current wave of deportations is happening under President Donald Trump. That story is darker, more complicated and often doesn’t come with a middle or upper class résumé.

Sam Levin concluded his piece that since his return, 'Thomas' said he has had a hard time sleeping and processing what happened, which is very understandable. But then the reporter claimed he also “struggled with long-term health problems that he attributes to malnutrition and inappropriate medications he was given while detained”. As my old primary-school teacher Pat Dowling may have said: “This is just tearing the arse out of it." The media really need to stop creating stories of extremes: of completely innocent victims versus evil incarnate. Tell the unvarnished truth, find the real untold story of injustice and let your readers make up their own minds.

The Guardian and other outlets who copy-pasted this story should also ask harder questions. Otherwise, we risk mistaking the noise for the signal - or worse, create more noise and in doing so, ignore the real victims of ICE raids, imprisonment and deportations, whose stories are not told because they are not middle-class white and English-speaking, don’t have media connections and don’t have the option of flying home to safety in Ireland.

Thomas could have told his story better by accepting his stupidity in overstaying a visa, but then opening our eyes to the horrifying detention centres, through the eyes of this Irishman as he saw first-hand what is terrorising millions of brown-skinned people in the United States today, tonight and every night. Because, unlike Thomas, if they are rounded up and detained by ICE officers, no-one may come to save them.