The Department of Homeland Security emailed CBS News on Oct. 6 about Moussa Diawara’s old asylum application, nearly three weeks before “60 Minutes” aired his story, Fox News reported Oct. 29. Fox said it had obtained a copy of the email.
DHS says that in the application, Diawara cited his sexual orientation as the reason he feared persecution in Mali. The Oct. 25 segment didn’t mention it.
A CBS News spokesperson declined to comment to Fox. An unnamed “60 Minutes” source defended the report. “The broadcast acknowledged DHS questioned the credibility of Moussa Diawara’s fear of persecution, which they’re claiming now on social media,” the person told Fox.
The New York Post first reported the timeline Oct. 27. It cited a DHS spokesperson who said CBS had been told two weeks before the broadcast, according to the Post’s story on Yahoo News.
What ‘60 Minutes’ Reported About Moussa Diawara
Diawara, 57, lived in the Houston suburbs for 25 years and drove for Uber. CBS said he had no criminal record. His wife, Barbara, is a registered nurse, and their two kids are U.S. citizens.
In 2012 an immigration judge ruled he could be deported, but not to Mali, according to the CBS transcript. ICE arrested him July 11 and flew him to Ghana. Within five days, he said, Ghanaian officials put him on a plane to Mali.
“This is kidnapping. You guys kidnapped us,” he told correspondent Gianna Toboni.
He told CBS that part of why he didn’t feel safe in Mali was that he’d become a Christian. The broadcast also said DHS questioned whether his fear of persecution was credible. DHS general counsel James Percival told Toboni many people who claim fear don’t make credible claims. “There’s a lot of fraud there,” he said.
“I’m not a criminal,” Diawara said.
James Percival’s Post and the Asylum Pages Fox Published
The day after the broadcast, Percival wrote on X that he had “pulled” Diawara’s 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,” he wrote. ICE’s official account followed with a post that opened “Fake & Gay!” as Gayety reported.
Fox then published pages it said came from the application. It hasn’t said who gave them to it. AllSides, reviewing pages a Fox reporter posted, said the application also described his situation as having “worsened” after he converted to Christianity.
Federal rules generally bar disclosing what’s in an asylum application without the applicant’s consent, though exceptions include the DHS secretary’s approval, The Daily Beast reported.
DHS pushed back. “There is no privacy violation. The governing legal authorities grant DHS discretion to disclose this information, and that discretion was properly invoked here,” a spokesperson told the Beast.
The Beast also quoted David J. Bier, an immigration policy expert, who called the disclosure “monstrous” and warned that “if his life wasn’t in danger before, it is now.”
Mali’s 2024 Penal Code and Sexual Orientation Asylum Claims
U.S. asylum law has treated sexual orientation as a possible basis for protection since the Board of Immigration Appeals’ 1990 ruling in Matter of Toboso-Alfonso, according to Immigration Equality. It became binding precedent in 1994.
Same-sex relations weren’t a crime in Mali until recently, The Conversation reported. That changed when Mali’s National Transitional Council, set up under military rule, adopted a new penal code Oct. 31, 2024. It took effect Dec. 13, 2024, and punishes same-sex acts with up to seven years in prison, according to the Human Dignity Trust.
No public response from Diawara or his lawyer, Reuben S. Kerben, to DHS’s claims had been reported as of Oct. 29, and CBS declined to comment to IBTimes UK. The Epoch Times said his lawyer didn’t answer its request for comment.
Kerben has asked a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to order Diawara returned to the U.S., CBS reported.
