A persistent symptom of ABC News’s Trump derangement is the overriding need to depict all resistance to Trump policy as virtuous, and anyone suffering the consequences of such resistance as victims, even when the law is clearly not on their side. Their insane coverage of a recent viral video proves this.

Watch as World News Tonight reacts to viral video of a female U.S. citizen being briefly detained in Florida, as aired on Thursday, December 4th, 2025:

DAVID MUIR: Now to disturbing images tonight showing ICE agents dragging a woman from her car in Florida. She is heard screaming for help, telling authorities, “I am a U.S. citizen.” She was placed in handcuffs. She was a U.S. citizen- and what Homeland Security is now saying. Here is Victor Oquendo with the video tonight.

VICTOR OQUENDO: Tonight, dramatic video showing a woman being pulled from a car during a Border Patrol operation in Key Largo, Florida, screaming she is a U.S. citizen. The woman pulled over during a traffic stop yesterday morning. Video capturing her struggling with law enforcement, who then pick her up and carry her to a grassy area where she is handcuffed.

FEMALE: Stop it.

OQUENDO: Despite screaming she is a citizen.

FEMALE: I am a U.S. citizen! Please help me! This is unfair! Why are you doing this to me?

OQUENDO: The woman is restrained and carried into an unmarked vehicle. The Department of Homeland Security telling ABC News the woman was driving her boyfriend’s car who is an undocumented immigrant, stating: “She was removed from the vehicle and briefly held while her identity was confirmed. She was promptly released once her identity was confirmed.” David, that video that shows the woman pulled from the vehicle was filmed by a Miami Herald reporter. DHS confirmed she is, in fact, a U.S. citizen. David.

MUIR: Victor Oquendo, live in Florida. Victor, thank you.

Remember the Deported Citizen Babies Hoax? That hoax is dead but the urge to run it back remains, albeit with grownups. This story aligns perfectly with a narrative of masked ICE agents marauding the highways and byways of America’s diverse cities in search of brown or brown-adjacent people to harass, regardless of their citizenship status.

Except…that this didn’t happen as reported and the story has a pretty big narrative-inconvenient omission. You see, the female U.S. citizen was not just targeted and yanked from her car, as Victor Oquendo’s report after David Muir’s melodramatic framing leads viewers to believe.

Here’s DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, clarifying why the female citizen was pulled from the vehicle:

During a traffic stop, a U.S. citizen, who was driving her illegal alien boyfriend’s car (who had been arrested prior) refused to comply with law enforcement’s repeated lawful orders to identify herself. She was removed from the vehicle and briefly held while her identity was… https://t.co/KndnZp8HDK
— Tricia McLaughlin (@TriciaOhio) December 5, 2025
That line “she was removed from the vehicle and held while her identity is confirmed” is quite sneaky. People don’t just get pulled from their cars. As McLaughlin makes clear, the woman refused to comply with Border Patrol and provide ID when asked. 

The same thing would’ve happened had she refused to comply with her local sheriff. But ABC News is not vested in undermining local constabularies, at least not yet. So it is that Trump-deranged ABC makes a material editorial decision to excise resisting law enforcement from a set of facts in furtherance of an adult rerun of the Deported Citizen Babies Hoax. This isn’t just fake news- it’s also extremely dangerous at a time when border enforcement agencies are under repeat threat of violence.