NBC 5 in Fort Worth produced a sympathetic investigation about two teenage girls living alone after their parents were deported by ICE. The anchor framing: a “stark example of the precarious situations facing thousands of U.S. citizen children whose parents have been detained during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.” Critics cited “rapid deportations” and a “new form of family separation.”
Then DHS told the part NBC buried toward the end. The girls’ mother, Daysi Eladi Munoz-Duron, was arrested by Burleson police for suspected shoplifting at a Walmart back-to-school shopping trip. After local law enforcement arrested her, she was transferred to ICE custody. She accepted a voluntary return and was deported in August 2025.
So: an illegal alien was arrested for shoplifting. ICE then took her into custody. She chose voluntary deportation. NBC turned this into a sweeping indictment of Trump’s immigration policy.
DHS called it precisely what it was: “What @NBCNews conveniently buried in this lying sob story is that the mother of these children is a CRIMINAL ILLEGAL ALIEN arrested for LARCENY.”
What @NBCNews conveniently buried in this lying sob story is that the mother of these children is a CRIMINAL ILLEGAL ALIEN arrested for LARCENY.
Following her arrest by local law enforcement for the crime, Daysi Eladi Munoz-Duron was transferred to ICE custody, accepted a… https://t.co/XxcSHaWvU1
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) August 17, 2026
The mechanics are also worth stating plainly because NBC didn’t. ICE does not separate families. When a parent is taken into custody, ICE asks whether they want to be deported with their children or designate a safe person to care for them. Munoz-Duron made a choice. She hugged her 19-year-old daughter Dulce in the parking lot, told her to take care of her 13-year-old sister, and accepted voluntary deportation.
Dulce Zepeda was 18 years old when this happened — a legal adult in Texas. The “arrangement” for her sister’s care was the one her mother made in the Walmart parking lot: put Dulce in charge. The NBC story presented this as an example of the chaos of rapid deportations. What it actually illustrates is a mother who committed a crime, was arrested by local police, was transferred to ICE, and made her own decisions about what happened next.
DHS offered illegal aliens up to $2,600 plus a flight home to self-deport before any of this happened. The family chose not to take that offer. The consequence of that choice is what NBC filmed for its “investigation.”
Bill Melugin of Fox News put it plainly: illegal aliens have been warned repeatedly they will be subject to arrest, detention, and deportation if they don’t take the self-deportation offer. They were warned. They chose differently.
As usual, buried within the underlying article is the revelation that their mother was arrested by local police on suspicion of shoplifting – which is how the parents ended up on ICE's radar as they were both in the US illegally.
Illegal aliens have been offered $2,600 and a… https://t.co/Bhd9JV8vzM
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) August 17, 2026
This is not a complicated moral story. It is a straightforward legal one: a person entered the country illegally, committed a crime, was arrested by local police, and was deported. NBC produced a tearful investigation. DHS produced the actual facts.
With 78 days until the midterms, expect more sob stories with buried leads. Read to the end.
