The gut-wrenching story of the Iraqi family spread quickly across the Internet on Tuesday, depicting what seemed to be among the most calamitous examples of a family torn apart by President Trump’s order temporarily barring people from seven countries from entering the United States. A Michigan man claimed his sick Iraqi mother died a day after being turned away from traveling to the U.S. as a result of the executive order.
“They destroyed us,” the man, Mike Hager, told Detroit’s Fox 2, claiming that if his mother had made it to the United States as scheduled, she would have received the medical treatment necessary to survive. A number of national news outlets published the account, linking to the original interview.
But late Tuesday night, the story began to fall apart. The local Fox affiliate “received many questions about the validity of Hager’s claims that his mother died waiting to be approved to come home,” it wrote. On Wednesday afternoon, the Fox station published a story with the headline: “Man who claimed mom died in Iraq after Trump’s ban lied, Imam confirms.”
Sources close to the family also told The Washington Post that the man appears to have fabricated the tale.
[Judge halts deportations as refugee ban causes worldwide furor]
A leading imam in Dearborn, Mich., who oversees a congregation of primarily Iraqi refugees, including Hager’s family, said Hager’s mother actually died at least five days before Trump’s executive order was put into place.
The imam, Husham Al-Husainy, said Hager sent him a message last month informing him that he would be traveling to Iraq to see his sick mother, Naimma. On Jan. 22 — two days after Trump was inaugurated — community members and posts on Facebook informed Al-Husainy of the woman’s death. She had been living in Iraq for quite some time, and she died in Karbala, Iraq of kidney failure, he said.
Al-Husainy, leader of the Karbalaa Islamic Educational Center in Dearborn, said he helped lead a number of community prayer services in her honor over the course of the next three days. Al-Hajar had lived in Dearborn on and off since 1995.
D’ye think people have forgotten what “fake but accurate” means yet?
Could be due for a revival as a phrase, no?
Yet another story where the, ahem, facts perfectly fit someone’s fantasy.
Speaking of ethnic stereotypes, a Middle Eastern man turns out to be a lying sack of sh!t.
Amazing innit?
You know what else tears families apart and kills people’s mothers?
Islamic terrorism.
May we infer that there are no true hard luck stories around? I think we reasonably may.
I was talking to somebody else about this the other day: it pisses me off whenever some government policy is enacted, they wheel out some individual who is a victim of it. Yes, individuals are important and their stories need to be told, but every single government policy will have winners and losers and wheeling out some sob-story every time is doing nothing to inform the debate and doing everything to manipulate it.
Oh dear, another newspaper didn’t do its due diligence because the story was too delicious not to rush into print…
@TimNewman: Ah, but remember, whenever the other side does this, the Left cry ‘Anecdotes aren’t data!’..
“Speaking of ethnic stereotypes, a Middle Eastern man turns out to be a lying sack of sh!t. Amazing innit?”
It is not a sin for a muslim to lie to an infidel, providing the lie is in the interests (variously defined) of Islam. It’s called taqiyya.
We were told that Muslims cannot lie. Quite senior people in government have said this.
Anyone who has had an Arab boss laughed derisively when they heard this, but that was probably because they were a racist or something.
What utter scumbag uses the death of his mother for political purposes?
Where’s all those fact sherpas when you need ’em? Or are they only needed to
censorvet pro Trump stories?“It’s called taqiyya.” So much about Islam is reminiscent of Roman Catholicism a few centuries ago. I suppose their origins in Late Antiquity explain a bit of that.
If the updated story is true, it is pretty f’ing disgusting to use your own mother’s death – recent death – to score SJW points.
When you think they can’t go lower they start digging.
Well done to the Imam for coming forward though.
Just seen DocBud’s comment, which was pretty much the same as mine.
Yours was so much more eloquent, Cynic.
Tim Newman,
“I was talking to somebody else about this the other day: it pisses me off whenever some government policy is enacted, they wheel out some individual who is a victim of it. Yes, individuals are important and their stories need to be told, but every single government policy will have winners and losers and wheeling out some sob-story every time is doing nothing to inform the debate and doing everything to manipulate it.”
Don’t be pissed off. This is the left’s achilles heel. They pick up on the odd highly emotional “perfect” case of Mrs Miggins, a nice old lady and use it. If you try and argue a wider context, they’ll say “yeah, but what about Mrs Miggins”. And no-one likes to say “shit happens” because they sound like a meanie. So they shut up. And the left “win”. And they do this over and over. And as a result, they’re certain they’re going to win elections. But when people walk into a polling booth they express what they won’t in conversation. And the left lose.
They never take a balanced view. Benefit reform is another one. A small number of people got crapped on. But a huge percentage of incapacity benefits claimants didn’t even turn up for an interview when the process started. That is, people who got better but didn’t see a good reason to sign off. I forget the numbers, but it was embarassing to anyone arguing that there wasn’t a problem.
TN, BiW
Isn’t it strange how the Lefties suddenly become all about the individual when it suits them?
HEIL al-Hussaini.
He seems like a decent enough guy, very forthright.
http://humanevents.com/2011/12/15/shocking-truth-about-allamerican-muslim-star-and-lowes-good-call-2/
Pity he’s a Muslim, but noone’s perfect.
This sort of thing is why it is unjust to allow in rats from majority-Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia (which financed, planned, and committed the 9/11 attacks) while banning compartively decent Shia, especially from better places like Iran.
Cripes.
Isn’t it strange how the Lefties suddenly become all about the individual when it suits them?
Indeed.
They pick up on the odd highly emotional “perfect” case of Mrs Miggins, a nice old lady and use it.
Or, more often, a case which on closer inspection appears to be rather less than perfect. JuliaM is an expert in spotting this sort of thing, and I don’t mind dabbling in it either.
Tim Newman,
“Or, more often, a case which on closer inspection appears to be rather less than perfect. JuliaM is an expert in spotting this sort of thing, and I don’t mind dabbling in it either.”
Well, yes.
I’ve gotten very cynical about this stuff, partly because of the digging of people like JuliaM and personal experience. Contractors I know that spend long periods out of work are the people spending no time training, or not taking work that’s a bit tricky to do etc etc.
Cynic: Isn’t it strange how the Lefties suddenly become all about the individual when it suits them?
Fergal Keane introduced this sloppy excuse for failing properly to report a story at the BBC, I think. Wretched man.
Paul Rain,
Iran hasn’t been a nice place since the people their rose up and overthrew the puppet we installed, in place of their elected government circa 1953, in 1979. Until the Iranian people wise up and realize that western motivations are simply more important than local issues in the running of their nation they will continue to be persons non grata. After all, if the majority there aren’t willing to live under US government control why would anyone think that the few who actually come here would be willing to bow to own superior state apparatus?
“Speaking of ethnic stereotypes, a Middle Eastern man turns out to be a lying sack of sh!t.
Amazing innit?”
And where does the Imam fit into your theory?
My default position is to reject these sorts of things out of hand. I used to simply reserve judgement, but I find that the number of times I’ve recently had to revise my initial opinion is very small. Fishy smells usually indicate rotting fish somewhere about the premises. It’s like “hate crimes”: unless there’s unequivocal cellphone video, I simply don’t believe it. Since essentially every adult human in the West is now a full-time amateur videographer, lack of visual evidence is enough of a rule-of-thumb to be practically dispositive.
@Ironman
Please read the link in what Paul Rain posted. That’s why I replied “Cripes”.
We are deeply enriched by these vibrant people:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4184966/Child-sex-gang-members-shout-Allahu-Akbar-court.html
And diversity is our strength:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4184454/Bupa-carer-hit-elderly-dementia-patient-s-head-chair.html
Cynic
I think it’s SMFS’s to answer.
So “The Donald” has saved the US from zombie invasion? Sorry to rain on the SJW parade but when it comes to having to fly I can be rather choosy. When it comes to sitting next to a Dead woman, I’m downright bigoted! Of course she should have been refused! How many dead immigrants have you seen walking in and out of the place?
Liberal Yank – “Iran hasn’t been a nice place since the people their rose up and overthrew the puppet we installed, in place of their elected government circa 1953, in 1979.”
Please don’t take this the wrong way, LY but f*ck off. You did not do any such thing. We did. Us and the Soviets. We over threw the last Shah’s father, because he was a total Nazi, and installed the son. Back in 1942 or so. You didn’t do sh!t.
And it is insane to claim that Iran was a nice place before the Iranians overthrew their batsh!t insane premier back in 1953. It wasn’t. It was a sh!thole. Mossadegh was over-thrown for entirely Iranian reasons by Iranians. He alienated the Shah and hence the Army, the Clerics, the Bazaaris, and had been voted out of power when he stepped in to end the voting count. The West played no role in that at all.
And of course the Shah was not a puppet.
So on a scale of one to ten of useless wastes of bandwidth I would say you are doing an outstanding job. That post probably cost a tenth of a cent to make and it wasn’t even worth that.
“Until the Iranian people wise up and realize that western motivations are simply more important than local issues in the running of their nation they will continue to be persons non grata.”
F*ck off. You think you are being smart but actually this is true. The Guardian is over that way. You will be happier there.
Ironman – “And where does the Imam fit into your theory”
No idea. I have never talked to Bowie’s widow.
You are still a c&nt though.
SMFS
So you don’t have an answer.
You Thick.Racist.Prick
Ironman – “So you don’t have an answer.”
That was an answer. You can’t be that stupid you do not recognise it as such.
SJWs always lie.
If you guys want a hard luck story, here’s one.
People from Blaine, Washington, US often drive across the border to Surrey in British Columbia to go shopping.
About 10 minutes before Trump’s order was published, two Iranians living in Blaine drove into Canada for a short shopping trip as they do every week. They took only their green cards and about 200 Canadian dollars in cash.
When they tried to go home, they were told that they had better make plans to sleep in their car for the next 90 days.
Fortunately for them they did manage to get readmitted to the US after sleeping in the car for 2 nights.
That does stink.
However, my experience of Iranian ex-pats is that sadly most of them are leftists, so want “more government”. Bit odd considering how their revolution panned out; must be a middle-class thing. Hopefully these two were of that ilk, so got a small taste of what “more government” looks like and might just have learned something.
Really shitty if they aren’t and got caught out ‘cos no-one thought to warn them it was imminent. Was it widely known before it went into effect?