The ICE “Diaper Dad” Story Isn’t What It Seems

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Whether you need peace, encouragement, or a fresh start, Pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday life. I'm on the way to pray for all of you, and I'm on the way to pray for all of you. One of our favorite guests daily wire, immigration reporter Jenny Ter, Jenny, thank you so much for coming back on the show.

Thanks, it's great to be back. So we have so many things that we could talk about, because you are, of course, writing

prolifically, constantly getting scoops and exclusives on your beat, which is potentially

one of the crazier beats that we cover. But instead of talking about, you know, the migrant crisis in Spain, the potential push to house to mark when mulling from the Department of Homeland Security, the recent back and forth on whether ISIS is going to do vehicle stops or not, which is another story that you broke.

“I want to talk about what I think is maybe my favorite story that you have written ever.”

And it's about our friend Martín Soto, and specifically the recent developments that you had communicating with his wife. So before we get into the really good stuff, why don't you just take us back, remind us who this guy is, and why he's in the news at all to begin with? Right.

So if you all remember, there were those hunger strikes at Delaney Hall, that's the Ice Detention Center in Newark, a few months back, a lot of chaos outside the facility, clashes between anti ice protesters and local and federal authorities. There was a lot of concern about the conditions inside from those anti ice protesters.

And they said that that was why those detainees were on a hunger strike inside, we basically

“at the time actually had debunked that there was really a true hunger strike going on”

because what ended up happening is that those detainees were just opting not to eat. Their meals for the day, and they were just stocking up at the commissary where the offerings were pretty nice. They even had like clams. They had like sushi, as well as like your normal, you know, like Fredo's Honeybun's type

of thing. But... Which like to be clear? Yeah. Not jumping the line to eat ice detention facility sushi, but the fact of the matter is that

is an absurd thing to have on offer regardless of the quality of the growth of the quality if what you're claiming is you're on a hunger strike anyway, I digress. Exactly. So, would not go for the clams, but the situation was that Martin Soto, one of the detainees from Peru that was inside that facility was actually said to be leading that hunger strike.

And was his wife, actually, was outside the facility at the time. She was kind of leading some protests on behalf of those detainees, and she was arguing for her husband's innocence, and she was saying that he was taken by ice while he was out buying diapers for their child, and that she said that happened on February 1st. I'm to find out through a police report that we obtained this individual Martin Soto

was actually arrested, yes, on February 1st. Not by ice, but by local authorities in Carney, New Jersey, where they took him into custody for charges of domestic assault, simple assault, and there were some details that were provided in the police report, however, the name of the victim, which again, this was a domestic assault.

The name of the victim, we don't know, because it was redacted. Now I can give you a glimpse into what was said about what Martin allegedly did that day, which was he purposely caused bodily injury to this unnamed female victim, specifically by using his hands, both open and closed to strike her in her face, causing minor scratches

That's what the police report said.

“Now, I did take him into custody, that's why I've jumped again, because you've laughed”

out the last part, which is Soto then allegedly placed a hand over her mouth so she could not scream for help. That's also a quote from the quote. So, a hoover her mouth so she could not scream for help. So this is all in, again, a local police report.

So I mean, also, I guess this is probably redacted, but we don't, someone called 911, right? And we either presumably, right, either the victim or a neighbor who heard a scuffle, right? Like, this was cops were called, they arrest them. They put him in jail. Again, up until now, we are talking about a horrific, but a pretty standard, like, if this

is something that any citizen did in the United States, they would also be brought to jail, right? Exactly. He was brought in to jail. This is, you know, so February 1st, well, it wasn't until February 2nd that I showed up

to the jail. They encountered him at the jail, and that's when they took him into custody and took him into Delaney Hall, apparently, because of the charges against him. And learning that he was in the country illegally. So, no, according to this police report, he was not out, innocently buying diapers when

he was said to be kidnapped by ICE. This is completely different, the story that his wife has put out, and this whole victim narrative has completely unraveled because of this, and, yeah, truly shocking stuff when I run this. Before we, I want to get to his wife, next, because this is the best part of the story.

But the other question, no one's denying that he's here illegally, right? Like, even before you reported this police report, even when the sob story narrative was still what everyone was running with, neither Martin nor Gabriella Soto said he was here right. So, that's even crazier that the thing that they were running with was that he was kidnapped

off the street, even if he was just out happily buying diapers, you know, whistling a happy tune. He's still here illegally. So it's still within the purview of federal immigration authorities to arrest and detain him.

So it's crazy that that's, again, like, it's even from the beginning. The, the, the defenders here in the immigration activists are moving the ball so much,

“which is, again, I think that's an important point.”

Like, he was deaf. No one is denying that he is here illegally. Right. But his wife remains his biggest supporter. And so you, like any intrepid journalist, what, you've reached out to her.

And I just want you, please just tell me the story from the very beginning. How'd you find her? Where'd you contact her, tell us, walk us through the conversation, spare no detail. Yeah. Well, obviously, when I heard this was a domestic situation, I wanted to reach out to the

wife. And I also wanted to reach out to her because she's the one alleging that he was innocently taken by ICE and that it was over circumstances of buying diapers. So I wanted to get her side of the story based on, you know, what we had come up with.

So I sent her a message on Instagram and I said, here's what we've learned from this police

support and she seemed to have no knowledge of it or said she had no knowledge of it. She immediately said, my husband never hit me. I even have proof from pictures and selfies. I'd taken that week and she said she did not have any injuries and that he never hit anyone and would never hit another woman.

So I then, I sent her the police report and I said, here's what I have in front of me right now, like, can you explain what I'm looking at and like, do you know who the victim is? She confirmed that it was her husband's information, but again, said that he never hit any woman and that they don't live with anyone else. So she couldn't think of anyone apparently and just kind of got into some semantics about,

you know, one number being off on the address, but said all the other information was correct. So, you know, then I kind of went into the, well, what about the buying diapers thing? Like, was that what was happening? So like, now that you have this in front of you, do you still want to say that? And is it possible that he was with another woman and I'm not saying, I'm sorry, like,

I'm going to go there. I'm not saying that it's relevant to the story. It also happens to be hilarious. I just guys, when Jenny sent me the screenshots of these texts, I was just, I was like, this is, this is why she's the absolute goat.

“Like, that's just, you have to ask them.”

Well, come to the real housewives of journalism.

So, um, yeah, so basically, you know, and it was a fair question because, okay,

I'm not saying he's having a fair. I'm saying, was it his mom? Was it one of the children's

“grandmothers? I don't know. Um, you know, who is this woman?”

And she just went into that, you know, you're insinuating my husband's cheating on me. Can I read, I know we didn't pump the screenshots. But can I? Yeah. Yeah. Jenny said, you said, how do you know he was out buying diapers? Is it possible he was with another woman? I'm wondering if Martin kept this information from you. We know he was handed off in the jail to ICE on February 2nd after this arrest.

She said, and I can't stress enough, guys, but this is on Instagram DM, which just makes it aesthetically so fantastic. Please do not insinuate that my husband, my and all caps, was cheating on me, because I have been with him since I was 19.

I know he will never cheat on me and that would never happen, okay?

You do not know anything about my marriage, my family, or my relationship from one report. My husband will never do nothing to harm his family or his marriage. I know exactly where he was and what he does and who he talks to. Do not ever tell me about my marriage or family. Do not ever tell me about what my husband did or didn't do. To which you would have lied, I did not mean to insinuate. It was another romantic partner.

I'm just trying to understand the origins of his arrest by Cureney P.D., she said, "Well, try and understand it another way, because my husband never got arrested by Cureney P.D., he left the house on February 1st at 530 p.m., I have messages and locations from everything for proof that afternoon, and I have a call from Delaney Hall at 1030-ish that night when he called me."

So a couple of things there. First of all, just incredible. Again, incredible.

“Second of all, I love her defense. You're like, is it possible that it was another woman he assaulted?”

And she said, "That couldn't, that couldn't be. I've known him since I was 19." Okay. Okay, so he hasn't talked to another woman. Yeah, also, like, that's definitely how that works. But in the craziest part is, she just says that he wasn't arrested. Like, that he, but she already confirmed that the information and the arrest record and the police report was her husband's

information. And then at the tail end of all of that, she says, "And he wasn't even arrested. If that's the case, why not just lead with that? Why send you 11 angry messages about how you don't know anything about her marriage? If her point is that police report is false, why not just say that police report is false, my husband was never arrested by Karen EPD and of conversation. Yeah. Fighting with a reporter. What was going on? What do you think? What wasn't that so crazy?

Yeah, I, you know, I was wondering at this point, like, well, why didn't she consult her lawyers who, actually, I should mention, I did reach out to as well and never heard back from. So she does have some legal support that she could have run this by first, but she was just, she just went rogue and this is where it got her, kind of tying herself and not over the story, like, not really giving clear answers or consistent answers.

It doesn't add up to me that, yes, that's your husband on the police report, but

no, that never happened and her explanation was basically that, you know, the policing system is

corrupted so who knows, but she didn't want to say like necessarily that the report may have

“been like fabricated because I'm like, well, what are you, you know, where would this have come from?”

You know, at this point, the question is like, are you saying that the police just made this up all together and I will say too that the New Jersey court system and the powers that be there made it very difficult to get any of this information and I had to go through sources to figure this out. So I still don't know the results of these charges. I don't know where the stands. It's very interesting to me how like Hushush, the system has been when it comes to this

local case against him. Yeah, we were, I was just saying this to you earlier before we started tapping the show, but it's it's crazy to me how the second deportation is on the table, the second that ice or CBP or federal officials get involved. Local authorities and, you know, people everyone and anyone who is in an immigration hawk just immediately sort of like brushes off whatever the kind of primary claim here was. We were discussing earlier, Kilmar, a breakout

Garcia right where they, they made all this hay about his, you know, being illegally detained. He was arrested for suspicion of human trafficking. You know, I said earlier, if, if I got pulled over with a car full of people who looked like they were there against their will, they're going to take me in. If, if, if, if my neighbor called the cops on me because I was beaten the crap out of a woman in my house, I'm going to go, you know, to jail and no one's going to say, well, hold on, you know,

you know, you know, right to do that. You know, he was, he was just, he was just in his home. He was just driving down the road. Yeah, he was in his home. He was driving down the road while committing a crime.

It's just one extra step that if these people were not here legally, then it's like, yeah, I mean,

“it's not, it's not punitive on top of it. It's not that we're deporting citizens for domestic violence.”

That would be bad. But we're deporting people who, again, crop up in the system because they've done other crimes. It's just, it's bad for it to be. But on that point, where is, so is Soto still in Delaney Hall or has he been sprung? Yeah, Gabriella eventually cooled down and she said that he's possibly going to be released. He had a, habeas petition, which moved his case out of the immigration courts to a district court where judges tend to be more favorable towards

illegal immigrants and in granting release. So it's possible that he will get out soon. That seems

to be what they're working towards. And I should also mention that her advocacy for her husband

has given her a massive payout. She started to go fund me arguing for his innocence saying that

“she's raising money for their family. And she raised about $67,000. So, you know, it's a lot of diapers.”

If that whole story is debunked, then what happens to that money? I don't know. She has, you know, a lot of incentive here to say on this. But you mentioned the Kilmarbrego Garcia story. It's almost out of the same playbook with that because the wife of Kilmarbrego Garcia, she stood by his side through all of his, you know, allegations of human smuggling and, of course, being in the country illegally and being an MS-13 gang member, all these things that led to his deportation

and then coming back for prosecution. She stood by him and then come to find out that she's actually sought orders against him for domestic abuse. So it's just an interesting thing that these seem very similar in that sense, but, you know, can't say exactly if, you know, what this is all a result of. But yeah, it's just, she's made a lot of money and she's still fighting for his innocence. And so I want to go back to that because you mentioned the fundraiser and earlier you mentioned,

you know, that she has lawyers. This is not just a woman standing outside, not just, you know, a girl standing in front of a boy asking for him to get released from, from ICE custody. She has she's working with multiple non-profits, right? Kind of pro-immigration or pro-legal groups. And the fundraiser is hosted by Act Blue, which is the Democratic Party's fundraising platform. This is where every Democratic lawmaker raises, like campaign funds, thanks for superpacks

and, you know, affiliate causes like this can be the platform also hosts that. And you reported on that. So, like, this is a pretty big, uh, a pretty, again, a pretty big massive effort that Gabriella Soto is at the middle of. But can you just talk a little bit about what's going on with the act Blue involvement and what that might mean for the platform? Yeah. So, aqua charities was the fundraising platform. It's the fundraising platform for the Democratic Party for the, for candidates,

Democratic candidates. And they were processing donations for this group called Koseka. That group was organizing anti-ice protests and then they also had a petition to free martin Soto. This man who was accused of, uh, domestic assault. And then led that hunger strike into Laney Hall. They said he was kidnapped by ICE while getting diapers. So, there's that story again. It came up there. And again, they're promoting that, what seems to be a false narrative,

wall, you know, fundraising and through the support of Act Blue in this case. So, it's all kind of, like, this web of connections that doesn't look great. We've seen time and time again the App Blue Charities, you know, helps support organizations like this. And they do take in the money

initially. And then they hand it back to the organization. So, there's always been questions about,

“you know, what are they keeping? Are they giving it all back? What fees are they charging?”

Because they do charge some fees and where does that money go to? So, we don't have a lot of answers as to that. But yeah, there's definitely some cause for concern about their involvement with this group that has been pushing this apparent false narrative about Martin Soto. And they didn't respond to comment for a request for comment, right? You reached out to Act Blue and they just didn't do anything from there, right? It's, yeah, that's such a fascinating platform.

I think in the past, they've got a common fire for posting donations for like foreign-based political

but one of the major Democrat campaigns is paying like $30,000 a month to Act Blue for handling fees

“for their funder. It's just, I mean, these platforms exist. Republicans have one too. It's called Win Red.”

But the crazy thing about Win Red is you never see stories about Win Red being employed

old in this, even from critical media, whereas Act Blue is sort of constantly under fire. I mean, Jenny, last thing before I let you go, where do we go next with these sorts of stories? I mean, like, is there anything, because again, obviously law makers in the Trump administration talk a lot about deportations and then things get held up when a specific person who is detained or deported decides to become an activist and then his family steps in and then clearly there's

“this whole activist fundraising network ready to come in and facilitate these protests. I mean,”

what is the answer? Is it just, is it just continued media coverage like what you're doing or

are their lawmakers that are trying to, you know, kind of stop the sort of thing. It just seems to be that an under-discussed thing is you could deport as many people as you want, but if each time you, if for every five people you deport, you create a new pro-will legal immigrant activist movement, it's almost like, is the juicy even worth the squeeze? Hmm. Yeah, it's a good question, but in a lot of cases, the Trump administration has gone full force against these activists,

“specifically there was a case in North Texas against Antifa members who actually were the first”

group to be prosecuted on terrorism charges against Antifa. They were caught staging a ambush outside of an ice facility there and they shot a local police officer in the chaos of it all because they lured officers outside of the building, outside of a nice office with fireworks on July 4th and then started just spraying bullets everywhere. You know, these smaller organizations, these groups that are forming around people like Martin Soto, Kilmarabrago Garcia,

they can be pretty loud, they have a lot of support, as we said, $67,000 raised on GoFundMe for Martin Soto's family, that's a pretty big chunk from just, you know, her efforts, but yeah, I mean, the media runs with these narratives that, and if you read headlines about Martin Soto, you'll see the headlines are about a man who was out buying diapers, who was kidnapped by ice. So we are the anti-show, do that? I tried my best. Like the strikers are eating ramen, the

diaper guy was actually in jail for, you know, knocking out a woman. It's amazing what happens when you actually just report the truth and not, you know, what the what the the criminals and their allies are or insisting. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I will continue to pull it that thread, like we're not gonna stop. So yeah, I definitely don't ever want the story to end. Jenny Ter is the daily

wires immigration reporter Jenny, it is a pleasure as always to have you on. Thank you.

Thank you for joining me, and thank you all for tuning in, we'll be back next week with another episode of Bond Story. In each morning with powerful daily prayers, inspiring Bible stories, and messages created to strengthen your faith. Whether you need peace, encouragement or fresh start, pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday life. Download the pray.com app today.