NBC News Humiliated After Anti-Trump Story Quickly Implodes

A damning report on a U.S. Immigration and Customs operation in Massachusetts fell apart after officials refuted a one-sided account reported by NBC News suggesting that agents held a 5-year-old girl as “bait” to try and arrest her parents.

The sensational report described a raid in Leominster, about one hour northwest of Boston, where ICE agents attempted to pull over a suspected illegal immigrant wanted for multiple criminal charges, including domestic abuse, strangulation, and vandalizing property. The individual, Edwards Hip Mejia, fled in his car to his home, running inside as he flipped his middle finger at his pursuers.

But in doing so, Mejia left his 5-year-old daughter inside the vehicle, where agents monitored her while her parents pleaded through their front door to return their child.

“Is that your daughter? Come here so I can see those IDs,” an officer asks in the video.

“Hey, I can give it through the door,” Mejia responds, leading the officer to demand that he exit the house and present it “right here.”

“Don’t touch her!” Mejia yells at the agents when he realizes he left his daughter behind.

“You’re more than welcome to come pick her up,” one of the officers says in a video recorded by the family.

Mejia and his wife have both lived in the U.S. illegally for over 20 years. When they refused to leave their house, ICE agents turned over the girl, who is a U.S. citizen, to her grandmother.

On X, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security denounced NBC News and other media outlets for suggesting that the child was being used as “bait” to lure her parents out of their home.

“ICE agents NEVER used a 5-year-old girl as ‘bait,’” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to the Boston Globe, adding that Mejia, who entered the U.S. illegally in 2000, “abandoned his own child in a car.”

She described how Mejia “ignored” emergency lights, fled the car in front of his house, “gave officers the double middle finger, and darted inside his house.”

“Officers helped rescue the child and called local police to report the abandonment,” McLaughlin said. The girl was turned over to her grandmother about three hours later.

“Stop the smears. Stop the lies,” the DHS statement added.

Mejia is originally from Guatemala, his wife said. The couple shares two children who were born in the U.S.

Two days after the video was taken, Mejia was arrested while heading to work. He is being held at an ICE detention center in Plymouth, according to his wife.

“Officers came out behind my house, arrested him, took him away,” she told Telemundo, NBC reported. “We are not criminals.”