“60 Minutes” knew that Moussa Diawara, the married father of two featured in its Sunday report, had claimed to be gay on immigration documents in what appeared to be an attempt to avoid deportation, according to a Department of Homeland Security official.
A DHS spokesperson told The Post on Tuesday that CBS News had been alerted to the apparently fraudulent claims about Diawara’s sexuality two weeks before the segment aired. Diawara had made the statements in an asylum application.
However, the program did not mention that Diawara, who is married to a woman, cited alleged persecution based on his homosexuality in documents filed in 2012 as a reason he should not be deported to his native Mali.
Instead, “60 Minutes” reported that Diawara said he could not return to Mali because he had converted to Christianity and feared religious persecution in the predominantly Muslim country.
A representative for the program did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment Tuesday.
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Diawara was deported to Ghana in July, more than 10 years after overstaying a tourist visa and seeking refugee status, which prevented his return to Mali.
Following the broadcast, DHS General Counsel James Percival said in an X post that he reviewed Diawara’s immigration file and found that his stated fear of returning to Mali was that he was “gay,” adding, “just in case you’re wondering how bad the immigration fraud problem is.”
Fox News obtained Diawara’s asylum application. In it, Diawara—who has a wife and was described by CBS News as a “Texas dad”—wrote that “since I came to the USA I had the possibilities to express my feelings to men without any embarrassment [and] no reserve.”
“Although I was born as a boy, but things appeared differently for me as I was already having female behaviors and feelings,” he wrote. “I was more comfortable being intimate with boys rather than with girls.”
During the segment, Diawara claimed that authorities in Ghana forced him onto a flight to Mali within days of his arrival in the West African country.
According to “60 Minutes,” Diawara has since left Mali and is living in an undisclosed country.