Report of ICE Deporting an 82-Year-Old Legal

On Friday, a native newspaper in Allentown, PA, revealed a story making a salacious declare against the Trump administration. According to “family members,” ICE had arrested and roughed up their 82-year-old grandfather, a legal asylum holder, before deporting him to Guatemala. 

The Morning Call claimed that Luis Leon was attempting to substitute his misplaced inexperienced card at a native USCIS workplace when the Chilean national was deported to the fallacious nation, where he ended up in a hospital recovering from pneumonia. Further, the household mentioned Leon’s spouse was stored in custody, in horrible circumstances, for 10 hours before being launched. 

Multiple worldwide information retailers, including The Guardian, ran with the story, giving it an air of credibility, to the purpose where AI engines like Google and Grok had been claiming it was confirmed. But by Sunday, holes began to seem.

SEE: That Claim About ICE Deporting an 82-Year-Old Legal Immigrant to Guatemala Just Got Much Weirder

For instance, why did the household first declare Leon had died in custody before altering the story to him being deported to Guatemala? Why might the Guatemalan authorities discover no report of Leon being admitted into their nation? Why was the granddaughter, who was the first source for the press, claiming that Leon had “no plans” to return to the United States if he was illegally deported to a nation he is not even from? 

Instead of urgent those inconsistencies, though, The Morning Call doubled down. According to their first replace of the story, the granddaughter flew to Guatemala and relayed info from Leon himself, including a sequence of new or altered claims. Immigration lawyer Nicolette Glazer, who has been chronicling this story from the start, was immediately skeptical given her experience. 

UPDATE on the UPDATES on the alleged deportation by ICE of Luis Leon to Guatemala:

So, after Guatemala flatly denied that anybody with the identify Luis Leon from Chile has crossed formally into Guatemala, a lot much less been deported there by ICE, the Morning Call places up an “update”…

— Nicolette Glazer (@NicoletteGlazer) July 21, 2025

The Morning Call doubles down and now says

1. not only is Mr. Leon in Guatemala he bought there on 1 July 2025 (10 days after his alleged arrest at the native USCIS workplace)

2. Mr. Leon “was taken in handcuffs from a Philadelphia immigration office and driven two days by bus to a detention center in Minnesota”. To the best of my information, there are no ICE run or GEO/Core Civic/LaSalle and so on (personal for revenue prisons) detention amenities but I imagine there are 3 county jails that have contracts with ICE to maintain detainees. But the 2-day bus straight bit isn’t plausible and will likely be a clear violation of the transport requirements.

3. Remember the story about how a relative in Chile was the one who discovered Mr. Leon in a Guatemala City hospital. The new model is that “a Chilean government contact of Leon’s brother was able to reach an official [in Guatemala] who told him Leon had been taken to Minnesota, then to Guatemala. It isn’t clear if that official was from ICE or another government agency.” Hmm what?!

4. Mr. Leon doesn’t plan to come back to the US.

To say issues weren’t including up can be an understatement. Key particulars in the story did not even match up with the fact of how the American immigration system works. That included the concept that Leon went to substitute his inexperienced card, one thing that hasn’t been obtainable to do in individual for years, and on Monday evening, the home of playing cards finally toppled. 

As it seems, not only did Guatemala have no report of Leon coming into the nation, but the hospital he was claimed to be at had no report that he was ever there either. An even larger bombshell dropped, though. Chilean authorities are now saying that a man with the identify Luis Leon, who had the identical beginning date as the Luis Leon from this story, died in their nation in 2019. 

NEW: It seems one other hoax has been tried. Family members of an 82-year-old Chilean man in PA went to the media claiming ICE arrested him while renewing a inexperienced card in Philly, that he died in ICE custody, then that he was secretly deported to Guatemala. The story went… pic.twitter.com/a1jRXT6qBu

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) July 22, 2025

It seems to have been all made up by the household, which has since gone darkish and stopped responding to the press. Here’s what occurred since the story first ran in The Morning Call, an Allentown, PA newspaper.

– Records in Chile show a man with his identical identify and date of beginning died in Chile in 2019.

– Guatemala says they’ve no report of him being deported to their nation. 

– DHS says there may be no report of him showing at any inexperienced card appointment in the Philly space, and they are saying ICE never arrested him. 

– DHS says they never deported him, and their only report of him coming into the US is in 2015 from Chile via the visa waiver program, not an asylum grant from the Nineteen Eighties as the household claimed. 

– His granddaughter claimed he was sick in a Guatemalan hospital with pneumonia after ICE deported him, and that he was traumatized (after first claiming he was lifeless). A physician at the hospital she claimed he was at says there may be no report of him being there. 

That meant The Morning Call had to make one other replace to their story. Naturally, their headline still made it seem to be the controversy was ICE’s fault. 

ICE says Allentown grandfather Luis Leon was never taken into custody, calls story a ‘hoax’ https://t.co/xdTy1DsXR6

— The Morning Call (@mcall) July 21, 2025

A Chilean journalist, Jose Del Pino of Canalo 13, mentioned a physician at the Guatemala City hospital where Nataly claimed to see her grandfather had no report of him.

Additionally, Del Pino mentioned, a man by the identical identify and date of beginning died in Santiago, Chile, in 2019. Chilean residents are issued national identification numbers and none matches one other individual with that identify and birthday, he mentioned. Del Pino offered a copy of the death certificates to The Morning Call.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that they’d been scammed, The Morning Call tripled down later in the article, repeating claims from “Nataly,” the supposed granddaughter, without any vital evaluation. The press has no backside, and as for all those left-wing podcasters and influencers who repeated this story in dramatic fashion? They are still deceptive their audiences. 

🚨 UPDATE: DHS is now denying that Luis Leon was ever detained or deported. Guatemala says there’s no report either.

That’s a sharp reversal from earlier reporting. But if no one detained him, who advised the household he was lifeless?

The fact doesn’t vanish because the federal government says…

— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) July 22, 2025

This complete factor was journalistic malpractice, and it’ll definitely not be the final time this occurs. The mainstream press has its narrative, and they’ve proven they’re prepared to run with whatever badly-sourced rubbish is given to them if they really feel it could actually injury ICE’s mission to implement immigration legal guidelines. A scandal like this did not call for an “update.” It referred to as for a full retraction and apology. We’ll see if The Morning Call, The Guardian, and others finally get there. 

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