“60 Minutes” presented viewers with a deported father, a grieving family and serious questions about U.S. immigration policy. Federal officials responded with something considerably less television-friendly: an old asylum application.

The resulting argument has become a dispute over what CBS left out, what immigration officials can actually prove and whether anyone involved might consider releasing enough documentation to settle the matter.

At the center is Moussa Diawara, a Malian national who, according to the CBS report, arrived in the United States in 2001, overstayed his tourist visa and remained for approximately 25 years without a criminal record.

The broadcast interviewed his wife, 16-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter about his deportation. Authorities sent Diawara to Ghana, which subsequently returned him to Mali. CBS reported that he later fled to another African country.

Then came the paperwork.

Immigration officials pointed to Diawara’s 2009 asylum application, in which he identified himself as gay and said he feared persecution or death if returned to Mali.

In the application, he described threats, rejection by members of his community and fears that his sexual orientation would expose him to violence.

Those statements did not appear in the broadcast, according to the account of the segment. Apparently, there was room for the family’s circumstances but not this particular chapter of the immigration file.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement accused the program of promoting a misleading account. DHS General Counsel James Percival, who appeared in the report, said CBS had turned Diawara into a “poster child” for allegedly wrongful deportations while overlooking information officials considered evidence of fraud.

That accusation requires an important distinction: A wife and children are not, by themselves, proof that someone lied about being gay. Nor does the material presented establish that Diawara has been charged with asylum fraud or that a court found his application fraudulent.

An emphatic government social media post is still not a verdict, even when the capital letters are working overtime.

CBS’ report discussed another reason Diawara said he feared returning to Mali: his conversion to Christianity. The broadcast reported that a U.S. judge had found he could face persecution there.

Both religious persecution and persecution based on sexual orientation can be grounds for protection. One does not automatically cancel the other. What remains unclear is how the earlier application figured into the later proceedings — a question that would benefit from actual records rather than another round of competing indignation.

A person described as a “60 Minutes” insider defended the segment to Fox News Digital, saying it included Diawara’s religious concerns and acknowledged DHS’ doubts about his credibility.

CBS declined further comment. It was unclear whether its journalists knew about the 2009 application before the program aired.

Percival also accused the broadcast of selectively editing his interview. He said he spoke for nearly an hour, including about deportations involving people convicted of serious crimes, but those remarks did not make the finished segment.

He said the program had promised to publish the complete interview.

That would offer viewers an opportunity to assess the editing themselves — a refreshing alternative to being instructed by each side about precisely how outraged they should be.

DHS, meanwhile, said Ghana had provided diplomatic assurances for Diawara’s safety. His subsequent return to Mali raises a separate question about what those assurances covered and how they operated in practice.

CBS owes viewers a clear explanation of its reporting choices. Immigration officials owe the public evidence supporting their fraud accusation.

Until then, the most useful contribution to this argument may be neither a sympathetic close-up nor an all-caps post. It may be the complete file.

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MichCon

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