So far this year illegal immigrants have put Omaha in an unwelcome national spotlight three times. Each time local coverage of the crimes has featured exquisite delicacy from local media in reporting about the immigration status of those at the center of events.
On Monday, as Donald Trump came to Grand Island with a pitch to rescue struggling Nebraska Republicans, Mexican-born Jose Ortega-Romero’s reckless driving was all over social media after he allegedly killed 70-year-old Omahan Christopher Szalkowski on Sunday.
The Nebraska State Patrol drove Ortega-Romero to the Sarpy County lockup on behalf of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In June, Mexican illegal immigrant Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez put us on the national map with a plot to use drones to kill Donald Trump, an effort that was busted before its co-conspirators could strike and then splashed across the nation’s newspapers and TV networks.
Alvarez is awaiting trial.
In February another illegal immigrant, Eswin Mejia, was sentenced to a couple decades in prison for the particularly odious auto-assisted killing of Iowa’s Sarah Root, a 2016 crime committed while the Honduran was street racing while drunk. That episode, which included nearly a decade as an ICE fugitive, sparked part of the first legislation Trump signed as president – Sarah’s Law. The law requires federal immigration authorities to take custody of illegal immigrants who are arrested for offenses that cause death or serious bodily injury.
Mejia is somewhere in the Nebraska prison system, hoping to get out in about a decade when he will be sent back to Central America.
The events have left many in Nebraska outraged, some just embarrassed. All of us are saddened by the needless death. Immigrants here from countries as far away as Syria, Ukraine and Somalia as well as those from our American neighbors, share those feelings, along with fear that angry Americans will blame them. For the most part, we don’t.
Still Nebraskans voted for Trump based largely on his promise to fix the illegal immigration problem. The deadly crash between a likely illegally-driven truck and a Porsche revealed in bloody detail how much work there is yet to do on his promise to deport those who don’t belong here. Senator Pete Ricketts brought up the crash at the rally as an example.
Omaha journalists reacted strangely to deadly Omaha illegal immigrant news coming up under the national spotlight.
WOWT’s incoherent “investigation” of Senator Ricketts’ comments droned on for four minutes and never really said whether or not the deadly pickup driver was in the U.S. illegally. A follow-up Instagram video several minutes long only added to the confusion. For some reason the fact that officials don’t know when or where Ortega-Romero entered the country, a legally irrelevant detail that remains unknown in many deportation cases, was, somehow, a big deal. The whole exercise looked like an effort to come up with a Ricketts gotcha.
The Omaha World-Herald, which issued a minute by minute summary of the Trump rally, wrote four paragraphs on the mom of a Grand Island girl murdered by an illegal immigrant who joined Trump on stage. The coverage didn’t mention that the killer was, you know, an immigrant of dubious provenance.
Coverage of the car accident that took an Omaha grandfather’s life was similar.
KETV gave us “ICE issued a detainer based on Ortega-Romero’s immigration status,” but never tells readers what that is. KMTV likewise says “ICE has issued a detainer,” but doesn’t report why.
The Omaha World-Herald uses the same dodge, “Ortega-Romero produced a photo identification issued by the Mexican consulate. As a result, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a detainer on Ortega-Romero.” At least they say Mexico.
The more left-leaning Nebraska Examiner didn’t cover it. The Flatwater Free Press mentioned it in a newsletter blurb where the truck is the one who ran the red light and the truck is the one who killed someone, person’s immigration status unsaid. Flatwater cared to say when they joined with The New York Times to reveal Governor Jim Pillen’s curious business relationship with illegal immigrants. Nevermind its connection to the president’s most controversial and dearly-held priority while he is literally making national news visiting our once safely red state.
KFAB and WOWT did manage to use the word “illegally” but only in reference to the way Sarah’s Law works and only at the tail end of their stories. Neither directly leveled with readers of their online coverage by simply saying Ortega-Romero came here illegally.
As a guy who has worked in mainstream media for 30 years, I get what is going on. There is great pressure from national media groups like the Society of Professional Journalists, an outfit that preaches journalists should couch their coverage to avoid “harm” and the Associated Press that enforces a style guide requiring pillowy soft euphemism for favored groups.
But you don’t work for them. You work for us. You want us to subscribe, read, listen and watch.
Nebraska news outlets, present company excepted, have put the fear of immigrants before the outrage and values of Nebraskans, treating the immigration status of convicted and accused criminals alike as something only to be spoken of in a hushed tone deep into their coverage, something we have to suss out. Instead of using blunt words like illegal, they mostly dance around it.
Here’s what I want from the Nebraska media that I voraciously consume. Level with me. Give me the facts straight. Treat us like Nebraskans are decent enough people that you don’t have to softpeddle things to stop us from hating immigrants. Don’t put your values and concerns above ours.
Like most Nebraskans, I love immigrants. I believe our state needs them and badly. I just want immigrants to follow the law. If they don’t or they didn’t, I want them gone.
— David Mastio is a Papillion resident and a former National Columnist for The Kansas City Star and Deputy Editorial Page Editor of USA TODAY.