It must be sob story season

Yesterday I covered the AP story of the Mexican legal immigrant who faces deportation because she was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. I didn't discuss the case itself so much as AP's treatment of it and their treatment of other more important news stories. It includes the following line:

Now she faces another ordeal - the prospect of being torn from her family and sent back to a country she no longer knows...

Today, Radley Balko alerts us to this 4/8/04 Richmond Times-Dispatch article about another immigrant in a similar situation. It includes the following line:

O'Brien is still there three months later, awaiting possible deportation to a country she no longer knows and far away from the family she has raised in America.

What a coinkydink! It could in fact be just a coincidence. Or, some advocacy group or other could be feeding these reporters quotes which they then incorporate into their articles. Why spoil perfectly good verbage?

For an example of how something like this might work, consider this article:

Since late November [2002], the Mexican government, via its Consulate Offices in the U.S., has planted the exact same Op-ed, give or take a comma or two, into at least 17 major U.S. dailies...

Immigration2003 · Sat, 04/17/2004 - 09:16 · · Importance: 1