DHS Says 60 Minutes Left Out Key Asylum Claim in 'Texas Dad' Story

The Department of Homeland Security is accusing CBS’s “60 Minutes” of leaving out a central fact from its sympathetic profile of a deported Malian man: the reason he gave on his asylum application for fearing a return to Mali.

The segment, which aired Sunday, Oct. 25, featured Moussa Diawara, 57, a Houston-area Uber driver and married father of two, according to CBS News. CBS reported that Diawara came to the U.S. on a tourist visa at age 32, overstayed it, and later sought protection on the grounds that he had converted to Christianity in a Muslim-majority country facing an Islamist insurgency. CBS reported that a U.S. immigration judge ruled in 2012 that he could not be deported to Mali, that ICE arrested him on July 11, and that he was deported to Ghana on July 31, after which he says Ghanaian officials forced him onto a flight to Mali.

This is immigration fraud.@ICEgov arrested Moussa Diawara on July 11 with a final order of removal granted by a judge in 2012. Diawara, an illegal immigrant from Mali, claimed he would be persecuted for his homosexuality if he was returned to his home country—despite being… https://t.co/7IHUv1OuNX

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) October 26, 2026

DHS and ICE say the program left something out. According to Fox News, which reported that it exclusively obtained Diawara’s 2009 asylum application, Diawara wrote that he needed to stay in the U.S. because he was a gay man who could be killed if sent back to his native country.

DHS General Counsel James Percival said in a post on X that Diawara was the program’s “poster child for what it claims are wrongful deportations,” and that after pulling 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,” the New York Post reported.

In its own post on X, DHS said ICE arrested Diawara on July 11 with a final order of removal from a judge issued in 2012, and called the case “immigration fraud,” noting he is married to a woman with whom he has two children. “DHS removed this illegal to a third country that provided diplomatic assurances for his safety,” the department posted, according to the New York Post, adding that the program “left this absurd bit of fraud out of their ‘Texas dad’ segment.”

ICE also weighed in on X, calling the 60 Minutes report “shockingly poorly researched” and saying Diawara “now faces allegations of immigration fraud.”

The fraud accusation comes from DHS and ICE. No criminal charge against Diawara has been reported, and CBS’s segment presented his account that he had no criminal record and was deported without being able to speak to his lawyer or a judge.

The dispute lands in the middle of a broader fight over third-country removals. CBS reported that “60 Minutes” obtained the names of 63 people on a deportation flight from Texas to West Africa, and that 17 of the 19 people it reached who were sent to Ghana said Ghana then transported them to their home countries against their will. In the segment, Percival said Diawara “wasn’t flown to Mali,” according to CBS. “He was flown to Ghana,” he said.

For the administration, the episode is another example of what officials argue is widespread abuse of the asylum system, and of a network story that, in their telling, presented only the half of the record that fit the narrative. The asylum application Fox News obtained and the account Diawara gave CBS describe two different reasons for the same fear, and CBS’s segment did not mention the first one, DHS says.

CBS News had not publicly responded to the DHS and ICE criticism in the reporting cited here.

Sources

• DHS on X
• Fox News
• New York Post
• CBS News
• ICE on X

Reporting by Daily Beltway.