A made-up sob story regarding President Trump’s immigration order was spread far and wide by the mainstream media and swallowed whole by untold numbers of people before it was retracted.
The Michigan man’s bogus claims were apparently “too good to check,” as they say.
Fox 2 Detroit credulously reported Mike Hager’s story that his mother had died in Iraq over the weekend after being barred from returning to the United States under Trump’s immigration ban. “They destroyed us. I went with my family, I came back by myself. They destroyed our family,” Hager told Fox 2’s Amy Lange.
After checking into his claims further, Fox 2 retracted the story. The mom had died on January 22, two days after Trump was inaugurated, and five days before the travel restrictions were implemented.
A local business owner who flew to Iraq to bring his mother back home to the US for medical treatment said she was blocked from returning home under President Trump’s ban on immigration and travel from seven predominately Muslim nations. He said that while she was waiting for approval to fly home, she died from an illness. FOX 2 has learned that claim was not true.
Mike Hager fled Iraq with his family during the Gulf War, returned during the Iraq war and worked alongside United States Marines and Army forces. He now owns a business in Metro Detroit and said his mom would still be alive today if President Donald Trump had not instituted his travel ban on Muslim countries.
A local imam in Dearborn confirmed to Fox 2 that Mike Hager’s mom did not pass away this weekend after being barred from traveling to the United States.
On Tuesday, Fox 2 had very sympathetically reported that Hager was “a proud American citizen whose family has now been torn apart” due to Trump’s dastardly travel ban.
“The immigration told us that the president of the United States put an order right now — you guys cannot go,” he told FOX 2’s Amy Lange.
Hager said he was traveling with his niece, two nephews, and his 75-year-old mother, Naimma, home to Michigan. He said they traveled to Iraq to visit family and when she fell ill but didn’t expect it to be a problem for the family to travel since they all had green cards and had lived in the United States for 20 years.
“I was just shocked. I had to put my mom back on the wheelchair and take her back and call the ambulance and she was very very upset. She knew right there if we send her back to the hospital she’s going to pass away – she’s not going to make it,” Hager said.
It was only after they received a tip from someone who knows the family that Fox 2 discovered Hager had lied about the death of his own mother.
https://youtu.be/_otbH9hfDVQ
At press time The Huffington Post had still not retracted their version of the fake news story:
Even the execrable Crooks and Liars and Daily Kos websites updated their posts.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member