ICE Lawfully Deported This Illegal Alien Under a Final Order. His Own Asylum Papers Contradict 60 Minutes' 'Texas Dad' Story

Moussa Diawara is an illegal alien from Mali. He landed at JFK on a tourist visa on Jan. 12, 2001, stayed after it ran out that July, and waited about eight years to apply for asylum, long past the one-year deadline in federal law. An immigration judge ordered him removed on Feb. 2, 2012, and that final order was never cancelled. ICE arrested him on July 11 and removed him on July 30 under that order, to Ghana, a country DHS says gave assurances for his safety.

ICE followed the law. The judge's 2012 ruling, called withholding of removal, blocked sending Diawara to Mali and nothing more. It kept the deportation order in force and left the government free to send him to another country. Even 60 Minutes' own report says Diawara acknowledged the U.S. "had a right to deport him," just not to Mali.

DHS also says his asylum claim was fraud. James Percival, the department's general counsel, posted after the broadcast: "I pulled his file. His claimed reason for fearing Mali was that he is 'gay,' just in case you're wondering how bad the immigration fraud problem is." On Monday, DHS put it in four words: "This is immigration fraud."

How 60 Minutes framed him

On Sunday, 60 Minutes presented Diawara as a "Texas father" of two in suburban Houston who feared Mali because he "had converted to Christianity" in a Muslim country. The segment was part of a 60 Minutes investigation into "third-country" removals, where the U.S. sends an illegal alien to a country that isn't his own because a judge has ruled he can't be sent home. CBS's companion story says Diawara, 57, came on a tourist visa at 32 and overstayed it.

Viewers got one line about the government's side: DHS "questioned the credibility" of his fear of persecution. The program didn't say why.

What his own asylum application says

The government's answer came from Diawara's own paperwork. His asylum application, published by Fox News correspondent Brooke Taylor, is a Form I-589, the government's application for asylum and withholding of removal, plus a typed statement attached to it. It shows a receipt stamp from January 2009. The form says Diawara arrived at JFK on Jan. 12, 2001, on a B-2 tourist visa that ran out that July. In the box for marital status, "Single" is checked.

His statement makes sexual orientation the heart of the case. "In fact I had experienced extreme punishment and persecution based on the ground of my sexual orientation," it reads. "I was more comfortable being intimate with boys rather than with girls." And: "Since I came to the USA I had the possibilities to express my feelings to men without any embarrassment no reserve." He wrote that his community in the U.S. had reported "my sexual orientation to my family back home."

Christianity shows up, but second. Paragraph five says his situation "worsened when I changed my religion to become Christian recently eight months ago."

Now do the math 60 Minutes didn't. The program says his son is 16. That puts the boy's birth within roughly two years of an application in which his father swore he was a single gay man who preferred men. Today that same man is presented as a married father of two whose wife is waiting for him in Texas.

What DHS and ICE say

DHS laid out the timeline the same night: an immigration judge ordered Diawara removed on Feb. 2, 2012, ICE arrested him on July 11, and on July 30 he was removed "to a country that provided diplomatic assurances for his safety." On Monday the department added that 60 Minutes "left this absurd bit of fraud out of their 'Texas dad' segment."

ICE was blunter. "NOT a Texas father!" the agency posted. "He is an ILLEGAL ALIEN from Mali with a final order of removal from a judge, who said he's homosexual in order to dodge deportation - despite having a wife and two kids at home. Wonder why @60Minutes didn't ask him about that." That post has been seen more than 1.7 million times.

Why the dates matter

Federal law generally requires an asylum claim to be filed within one year of arriving in the country. By the dates on his own form, Diawara's came about eight years after he landed. The protection the judge gave him in 2012, withholding of removal, has no filing deadline, but it is not a pass to stay. It keeps the deportation order on the books and only blocks removal to one country, which is why the government could legally send him somewhere else.

Think of it like a restraining order on one address, not a permanent lease. The order to leave the country stood for 14 years.

The bigger fight

The segment was built to put a face on third-country removals, which 60 Minutes says have sent about 25,000 people to dozens of countries. Percival defended them on camera: "I absolutely believe with all of my heart that these third country removals have stopped crimes from happening and kept Americans safer and that is our fundamental obligation at the Department of Homeland Security." He told the program that countries such as Eswatini and South Sudan have taken deportees convicted of first-degree murder, sexual assault, kidnapping and armed robbery after their home countries refused them. ICE answered the broadcast with a list of what it called the "most dangerous and violent criminals" removed that way, the part it says "60 minutes left on the cutting room floor."

The Supreme Court has let third-country removals continue and is set to hear the challenge in December, 60 Minutes reported. Diawara told the program that Ghana then sent him on to Mali, and his lawyer has asked a federal judge in Washington to order him brought back.

What nobody has answered

60 Minutes hasn't said whether its producers saw the I-589 before they built a segment on his fear of persecution, or why the asylum claim's central ground never made air. Nobody has said when Diawara married or whether he ever told immigration officials his story had changed. Those are the questions a fair interviewer would have asked on Sunday. DHS asked them on Monday.