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Facebook Removes Angel Mom's Posts on Illegals, Permanently Bans Donations to Angel Families Group

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Mary Ann Mendoza is not a popular woman among tech companies, it seems.

Mendoza, an “angel mom” whose son was killed by a drunk driver that was illegally in this country, was suspended from Twitter in July for doing what she’s done for years: Posting about illegal immigration.

Now, according to Breitbart, Facebook has done something similar. Not only has it taken down two of her posts for violating “Community Standards on hate speech,” she says the donation button on her organization’s page has been permanently removed, according to Breitbart.

The button allows individuals to donate to Mendoza’s group, Angel Families, through the social media platform.

A screenshot provided to Breitbart of the two posts shows controversial, if rather unremarkable, sentiments coming from Mendoza on illegal immigration.

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In one, she links to a Reuters article about Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Guatemala in which the House speaker “could cope with a migration deal agreed on with the Trump administration.”

“She WILL NEVER mention the thousands of innocent Americans KILLED every year by ILLEGAL ALIENS in AMERICA!!” Mendoza wrote.

“The concern and compassion she has for every country but her own speaks volumes.”

Another links to an article regarding an appearance by Mendoza on Breitbart’s radio program. The post includes a quote from Mendoza: “Illegal aliens affect American citizens every hour. … Americans are torn apart by illegal alien criminals every hour. They are. Either they’re killed, they’re raped, they’re assaulted, it’s a hit-and-run, or their identity is stolen. Every hour, an American is affected by illegal alien crime, and it’s growing every day as more of them come over our borders.”

Do you think Facebook is treating Angel Families unfairly?

These posts — the latter from July, the former from August — led to Facebook removing the donation button on the Angel Families page, as she “violated their community guidelines more than once.”

“Mendoza noted that open borders advocacy organizations like United We Dream, funded by billionaire George Soros, are able to obtain donations through Facebook despite routinely attacking the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents for enforcing national immigration law,” Breitbart’s John Binder wrote.

This double standard is less worrisome to me, however, than the shifting standards that social media seem to have applied to Mendoza and other conservative figures of note.

Neither of these posts were sudden one-offs for the angel mom — whose son, Mesa, Arizona, police Sgt. Brandon Mendoza, was killed in 2014 by an undocumented drunk driver who was on methamphetamines and registered a blood alcohol content three times over the legal limit for alcohol, according to American Military News.

In fact, for those of us who have been covering illegal immigration for years, both Mendoza and her son’s story are pretty well known. Assumedly, they’ve been known to Facebook and Twitter as well, as I’m sure she’s generated complaints before.

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So why, in the last several months, has Mendoza been censored on both platforms?

In July, according to American Military News, Mendoza said she “just got a notification that I had to remove six tweets, that they found them – in their words – ‘hateful, harmful or threatening.’”

Those are three of the criteria laid out in Twitter’s Rules and Policies as constituting hateful conduct.

One of the tweets was directed at Kamala Harris: “What law can I break and have you defend me so staunchly,” she wrote, according to American Military News. “Provide me sanctuary from our laws? Political cleanup from YOUR INACTION FOR DECADES is what it’s called. You have #bloodonyourhands for every death of an American killed by an ILLEGAL ALIEN CRIMINAL you are protected[six].”

Is this politically incorrect? Sure. Is this fiery? Absolutely.

Is this hateful? I think you’d have to stretch. Threatening? No.

Harmful? It depends how expansive your definition of “harm” happens to be, but I assure you I can find far more harmful stuff on there with just the click of a mouse, plenty of it of the liberal variety.

Here is Mendoza discussing her experiences with Twitter on “Fox & Friends” in July.

“I’m disgusted and disappointed that Twitter is trying to silence me,” Mendoza told Breitbart at the time.

“I had my world ripped out from under me the day my son was killed by a repeat illegal alien criminal. I am the ‘other’ side of this crisis and the end result of open borders and the careless release of illegal aliens at our borders because of time restraints.

“I will not be silenced in my warning calls of what could happen to any American citizen in the blink of an eye as it did to me,” she added.

“As an American citizen whose beautiful son was collateral damage to the ineptness if our elected officials, I will continue to bring my words to them in whatever platform I can. They owe it to me and every other Angel Family to have a hearing for our voices. Their fellow American citizens and our loved ones killed by their inactions. My voice is my son’s voice, never to be silenced by anyone.”

The problem is that social media is ubiquitous and the giants who control it would clearly prefer Mendoza to be silenced.

Facebook didn’t respond to Breitbart’s request for a comment. The company should.

A lot of people might be offended by what Mendoza has to say — and if they are, they can close the browser tab.

Something isn’t hateful just because it’s un-PC. That’s a distinction conservatives urgently need to stress to social media companies — before every politically incorrect voice gets 86-ed.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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