SB’s MAGA Outlet Smears Salud with Through-the-Looking Glass “Illegal” Charge

The below op-ed was originally published on SB Newsmakers with Jerry Roberts

In a hometown version of Trump’s birther conspiracy, the right-wing SB Current demands congressman disprove their evidence-free immigration attack

Without a shred of evidence, the right-wing Santa Barbara Current newsletter reported earlier this month that Rep. Salud Carbajal “immigrated illegally” to the U.S. from Mexico as a child.

When Carbajal’s office pushed back and demanded a correction, the pro-Trump organ refused.

The online outfit did not, and has not, citied a source to support the volatile allegation. Instead, the organiztion claims that it is not their responsibility to demonstrate the truth of what they published — but rather the five-term congressman’s duty to prove that their unverified story is false.

The Current’s Alice-in-Wonderland twist on professional journalistic practice and ethics is a small-town case study of how the authoritarian MAGA movement uses its own media echo chambers and ecosystem to spread “alternative facts” to adherents and acolytes. It comes as the news and information space has been atomized across the U.S., and the ensuing loss of shared reality fuels the unraveling of civil society.

“Facts – truths – have lost their power to hold us together as a community, as a country and globally,” the journalist and anti-disinformation expert Steven Brill writes in his recent book, “The Death of Truth.” He adds:

“If different people believe in different versions of the truth, there is no real truth shared by all. Truth shrivels away and dies – and what binds us together shrivels away, too. Mistruths, invented ‘reality,’ manipulation, distortion, and paranoia replace truth. Chaos replaces reason and civility. Power comes not through ideas debated civilly in democratic processes but to those who generate the most distrust for their own purposes.”

How the deal went down. On Feb. 6, Brian Campbell, a well-connected realtor and twice-failed local political candidate, wrote a lengthy screed about immigration in the Trumpist newsletter, which included the following paragraph:

The question is: why do we allow illegal immigrants to stay? Why do California and our local government turn a blind eye? One reason could be personal stories like that of Salud Carbajal, who immigrated illegally with his family at age five to Oxnard where his father worked on a farm. “

Just about everything about that last sentence is wrong, except the punctuation.

For starters, as Carbajal has recounted countless times, he immigrated as a small child to Arizona, where his father worked in a copper mine, from the family’s hometown in Mexico. (After hearing from Carbajal’s office, the newsletter’s editor slid back into the copy to fix that geographical inaccuracy, without appending a correction, clarification, or note to readers that the text was changed, per journalistic protocol).

More crucially, however, Campbell flatly asserted as fact that Carbajal had come to the U.S, “illegally” — but failed to attribute that rather notable and serious claim to, you know, an Actual Source. Inexplicably, he also made no effort to contact the congressman’s office for comment as to the accuracy of the allegation before publishing it, said Ian Mariani, Carbajal’s press secretary at the time.

After the piece appeared, Mariani wrote to publisher James Fenkner, branding the allegation “false” (Carbajal’s legal pathway to citizenship is detailed below). He requested “a correction by the author or a full retraction of the story, which further drives disinformation about immigrants in this country and the elected official who represents our region.”

Fenkner, a political provocateur and investor who led a fight against “woke” policies at the Santa Barbara Unified School District, had an eyebrow-raising response.

He told Mariani that he had searched Carbajal’s website for information about the allegation he had already published and didn’t find anything that disproved it.

“Would you kindly share with me information that Congressman Salud’s family moved to the US under a valid US visa? If so, what type?” he asked, seeking to prop up a faulty report with which his organization had blindsided the congressman, days after its publication.

Really? First the verdict, then the trial!

Incredulous illegality. Newsmakers has been sympathetic to the Current since it began in late 2023 — the more local news the merrier ! – subscribing to the newsletter, reporting on its launch, and even hosting Fenkner on our weekly journalism gabfest.

Alas, these days, its constant drumbeat of predictable Trump propaganda is truly tedious, although we remain entertained, if not well-informed, by Andy Caldwell’s rants about county government, Bonnie Donovan’s stylings about City Hall and Celeste Barber’s essays about the ideological odyssey of an erstwhile liberal.

But Campbell’s “illegal” allegation about Carbajal was a bright red flag.

A few days after the story appeared, Newsmakers contacted Mariani (who last week left Carbajal’s staff to work for U.S. Senator Adam Schiff), curious if the congressman had sought a correction. The press aide, saying he’d been rebuffed by the publisher, agreed to share his correspondence about the matter, which had ended with Mariani replying to Fenkner with exasperation and incredulity:

“Despite the fact that Congressman Carbajal served in the United States Marine Corps (which you can’t do if you are undocumented), was elected to Congress in multiple competitive campaigns which saw tens of thousands of dollars spent on opposition research against him, and currently maintains a top secret security clearance – the onus is on him to prove that he’s telling the truth about his immigration status rather than on your contributor who provides zero evidence?

“As much as the Congressman is flattered by getting his own ‘birther’ conspiracy theory, the fact that you don’t put the burden of proof on the author that has zero proof of the Congressman’s undocumented immigration history – which you’ve already acknowledged contained other falsehoods – instead of the Congressman is a bit absurd.”

Ya’ think?

A search for the source. Newsmakers reached out to Fenkner ourselves, to ask a very simple question: “What is SB Current source for statement that Salud immigrated ‘illegally’”? we emailed him.

“The author is the source,” Fenkner responded by text. He also said the onus was on Carbajal to rebut the unattributed story accusing the congressman of having “illegally” established U.S. residency.

Then we emailed Campbell: “What is your source for the assertion that Carbajal immigrated ‘illegally’”?

He too sought to deflect and spin away from the very straightforward question.

“What documents did Salud provide you to prove he emigrated here following US immigration laws and obtained US citizenship at age five? I ask about documentation, facts, because Ian at his office refuses to provide any proof that Salud and his family followed immigration laws.”

Ah, the ole’ Secret Source: the dog that didn’t bark.

Pure conjecture here, but we’re guessing there is not a copy of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics hanging on the wall over at Current HQ.

A couple suggestions, excerpted from it, to help explain \what journalists actually do:

• “Take responsibility for the accuracy of their work. Verify information before releasing it. Use original sources whenever possible…
• “Diligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing…
• “Acknowledge mistakes and correct them promptly and prominently. Explain corrections and clarifications carefully and clear.”

One more pro tip: When taking a big, high dudgeon swing with a sensationalist charge, it’s always good to have something to back it up, before hitting “publish.”

Salud speaks. When the veracity of its claim was challenged, however, the low-wattage Current took a page from their hero Trump, and simply doubled down.

On Monday, the online publication ran yet another Campbell immigration opus based on their very special, through-the-looking glass conspiracy theory. They rehashed the first story, ladled in another helping of aspersion, and for good measure, took a shot at Newsmakers after we’d contacted them in reporting this story.

Which, sure.

In the meantime, we reached out to Carbajal, asking for his personal response to the allegation that he had “illegally” immigrated, the first time he’d actually been asked.

“I am appalled by the accusations, innuendo and misinformation written by this right-wing blog post about my immigration journey and U.S. citizenship,” he told Newsmakers. “The ridiculousness of this assertion does not deserve further comment.”

That said, the congressman agreed to detail his “immigration journey,” from boyhood in Mexico to citizenship in California.

• His father, Salud Leon Carbajal, worked in the Bracero program, also known as the Mexican Farm Labor Program, established by executive order in 1942. “He immigrated via the normal application process method of submitting an application for permanent residency while he was in the Bracero program or as it ended,” in 1964, Rep. Carbajal said.
• Over the following five years, Salud Sr. and his wife, Sofia, and six of their seven children went through the process of applying for and receiving residency needed to come to the U.S. from their home in Moroleón, state of Guanajuato, Mexico.
• In 1970, when he was five, Salud went to the American Embassy with his mother as part of the process that led to him receiving a Permanent Resident Card (Green Card) which authorized him to immigrate.
• In 1984, Carbajal enlisted in the Marine Reserves, serving two four-year tours of duty, during which time he completed the paperwork needed to obtain full citizenship. He took the oath as a citizen in 1993.
• In 2015, when he registered to run for Congress, he completed documents, under penalty of perjury, attesting to his citizenship, a constitutional requirement for the office, as he did when he previously ran for the Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors. In Congress, he’s also been cleared to receive sensitive classified national security material, as a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Since 2015, he’s run and won the 24th Congressional District House seat five times, been repeatedly asked about his immigration story, and been consistent and forthcoming in his response, dating back to when this reporter first interviewed him about it more than a decade ago.

Despite the Pentagon, the U.S. Congress and America’s intelligence agencies, however, a posse of MAGA red hats have decided Carbajal must jump through whatever arbitrary hoops they erect, or else be recklessly smeared in his hometown.

For shame.