During a live television appearance this week, MSNBC host Joy Reid and Representative Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) downplayed the crime of an illegal immigrant raping a minor in New York City earlier this month.
Both figures mocked the June 13 attack, in which 25-year-old Ecuadorian national Christian Geovanny Inga-Landi bound, gagged, and raped a 13-year-old girl in a Queens park. The incident was brought up in the Tuesday interview when Reid pulled up three different chyrons — each from MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News — hours after President Joe Biden issued a mass-amnesty order for illegal-immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens.
“Here’s the three cable networks’ reporting of this,” Reid said. “Our banner said, ‘Soon: Biden announces legal protections for undocumented spouses of citizens.’ CNN’s banner said, ‘Biden announces new protections for some undocumented spouses.’”
“Here was Fox’s banner, ‘Migrant arrested for raping 13-year-old New York City girl,’” she added, suggesting the conservative news outlet did not cover the executive order on Tuesday. A Fox spokesperson said the implied claim was false.
Following his arrest, Inga-Landi confessed to police that he recorded the attack. He illegally crossed into Eagle Pass, Texas, in June 2021 and was subsequently released, the New York Post first reported. In February 2022, an immigration judge ordered Inga-Landi to leave the U.S. However, he ultimately stayed.
Fox’s chyron drew a chuckle out of Jayapal, who claimed earlier in the interview that “there’s a lot of fear-mongering” when it comes to Americans’ views on illegal immigration and the border crisis.
“I think it’s kind of remarkable that the polls I look at — the national polls — actually Americans still support immigrants. They support immigration,” the progressive congresswoman said. “It’s just that they would like to see a system that actually works and that can keep them safe and secure, and all of us want that.”
Jayapal has remained supportive of illegal immigration, even claiming last year that the U.S. “needs immigrants” because they “pick the food we eat” and “clean our homes.” Her remarks came during a House Judiciary Committee markup hearing, in which a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants currently living in the U.S. was being considered at the time.
Echoing her guest’s “fear-mongering” comment, Reid said conservative media’s coverage of illegal immigration is “a part of the problem” in Americans’ perception of the issue.
Nonetheless, the number of immigrants illegally crossing the southern border is at an all-time high due to the Biden administration’s lenient policies. In recent weeks, however, the president has taken steps to curb the record influx.
On June 4, Biden announced that he would place restrictions on asylum seekers. The order authorized Customs and Border Protection to close the border between officially designated ports of entry when the average number of daily crossings surpasses 2,500 over a weeklong period. After the asylum shutdown takes effect, the border can’t be reopened until two weeks after it is determined that average crossings have dropped below 1,500 for seven consecutive days.
Two weeks later, Biden issued his mass-amnesty plan to protect the spouses of American citizens from deportation and provide them with work permits if they have lived in the U.S. for at least a decade. The “parole in place” program is expected to benefit 500,000 spouses of U.S. citizens and 50,000 children under 21, the White House estimated.