DHS Emailed CBS on Oct. 6 That the Deported Malian Man in Its '60 Minutes' Segment Had Claimed to Be Gay in His Asylum Case; the Segment Did Not Say So
Fox News says DHS flagged the 2009 asylum filing almost three weeks before the Sunday broadcast. A '60 Minutes' insider says the show did note DHS questioned his credibility and did cover his religious fears. CBS declined comment.
A dispute over a sympathetic TV report on a deported man now turns on an email, Fox News reports.
The segment. "60 Minutes" aired a Sunday report on Moussa Diawara, a Malian husband and father who lived in the U.S. for 25 years with no criminal record, overstayed a tourist visa and was picked up by ICE. Fox says he was sent to Ghana and then to Mali, with his wife and two children still in the U.S. The report said a U.S. judge found he could be persecuted, pointing to fears tied to his conversion to Christianity. Mali is a Muslim-majority country. Fox says he has since fled to an undisclosed African country.
The email. Fox obtained an email the Department of Homeland Security sent CBS News on Oct. 6, nearly three weeks before the segment aired. Fox says it told the network Diawara had claimed in his asylum application that he was gay. Fox says the New York Post first reported the claim. A CBS News spokesperson declined to comment.
The filing. Fox quotes his 2009 application: "I had experienced extreme punishment and persecution based on the ground of my sexual orientation." It adds that his "tribal group and community as a whole had reported my sexual orientation to my family back home," and that "I could be executed either by the Islamic group or the community."
The DHS view. DHS General Counsel James Percival, who was interviewed in the segment, wrote on social media that the show made Diawara the "poster child for what it claims are wrongful deportations." He added: "His claimed reason for fearing Mali was that he is 'gay,' just in case you're wondering how bad the immigration fraud problem is." During the segment Percival said there is "a lot of fraud" in the system and many "fear claims" are untrue.
The CBS view. A "60 Minutes" insider told Fox the broadcast "acknowledged DHS questioned the credibility of Moussa Diawara's fear of persecution," and that his religious reasons for feeling unsafe did make the report.
Note for readers: we have not seen the asylum file or the email. Fox reports that the application and the DHS email exist, and CBS declined to comment on the email. Whether the claim in a 2009 filing was true is not established.