Thursday evening's Ingraham Angle show on Fox News spent much of its time on immigration and DACA, the Deferred Amnesty for Child Arrivals program which was unilaterally created without congressional approval by the Obama administration in 2012.

In one particularly telling exchange, host Laura Ingraham highlighted a major drug bust in Denver after she learned that all six men arrested or wanted are in the U.S. illegally — something the Denver Post and two other Denver-area media outlets which have covered the story have all failed to report.

Ingraham further contended that if the men had not been arrested, and assuming they end up being guilty as charged, it's reasonable to believe that several of them could have become citizens under certain of the DACA amnesty proposals currently under discussion in Washington.

Here are key paragraphs from the Denver Post's Thursday morning story (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Authorities dismantle heroin ring operating in Jefferson County and metro Denver

Investigators seized 3,305 grams of heroin worth $264,400 Authorities have dismantled a heroin ring operating in Jefferson County and metro Denver, seizing $264,400 worth of drugs and convincing a district grand jury to return a 61-count indictment against six men. The Office of District Attorney Peter Weir considered the men’s operation to be highly organized. Members of the enterprise received shipments of heroin from outside Colorado and stored the drugs in stash houses, according to a statement. ... In addition to (Fermin) Flores-Rosales, the other five men indicted were 47-year-old Cristobal Flores-Rosales, 24-year-old Juan Borques Meza, 30-year-old Mario Acosta-Ruiz, 21-year-old Yoel Soto-Campos and 25-year-old Joel Torrez-Espinoza. The men were accused of violating the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act from April to December. The indictment was returned Dec. 22. Five of the men have been arrested and are due in court on Jan. 16. Authorities have issued a warrant for Torrez-Espinosa.

Related stories at 9News.com in Denver and Patch.com also failed to report that the six men involved are in the U.S. illegally. All three stories have no indication that the reporters involved inquired about the immigration status of those arrested.

Ingraham cited these arrests during her show, after which a heated discussion of the relevance of DACA followed. Note how one of the panelists, an immigration attorney who could easily have answered the host's critical question, clearly refused to do so:

Transcript:

IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY MICHAEL WILDES: I don't think we want criminals and MS 13 here. LAURA INGRAHAM: Right. Well let me get into that, because we promised their viewers we would share some information tonight that we uncovered today. I was going around the Internet, and I landed on the Denver Post website. It's an interesting website. They report on some cool issues that I care about, and crime is one of them. And there was a major heroin bust in Colorado this week. There's a 61-count indictment against six individuals. Now we called over, and I guess we transferred a few times around. We found out that in addition to the main suspect, (Fermin) Flores-Rosales ... (Ingraham then named the other five men identified earlier) are all illegal immigrants. This was $264,000 dollars worth of drugs, including heroin. We know what heroin is doing to our youth. We know what it's doing to our societies. It is poisoning them. That's just one example. And that's why it matters, because real lives are affected. And how many of these "kids" could be DACA recipients if they hadn't been busted in a heroin ring? WILDES: Laura — INGRAHAM: Michael, they could receive DACA amnesty, could they not? WILDES: Laura, get these criminals out. Get this insidiousness, the opioids — INGRAHAM: Why should — no, Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael. Why, why should our law enforcement — WILDES: Are you going to conflate 900,000 innocents with MS 13? INGRAHAM: Yes, yes. No-no-no. Michael, here's what you do. Again, this might work in your law practice. Doesn't work with me. These are individuals who are taxing our police, Our district attorneys, our government services, by poisoning our youth. WILDES: They cannot get DACA if they're, if they're criminals they cannot get DACA — INGRAHAM: Oh, they're all valedictorians, right Michael? Mark Krikorian (another person on the panel, as was Ann Coulter — Ed.) They shouldn't be in this country. They shouldn't have been allowed in this country, and they never should be here. WILDES: They cannot get DACA if they're criminals. INGRAHAM: Yeah, because we caught them. How many didn't we catch?

Bingo.

Note that four of the men arrested are 30 or younger. Depending on the details of their circumstances, much of which must be taken on faith because they can't be verified — particularly pinning down when they allegedly entered the country illegally — one or more of these eligible "children" could indeed have become DACA amnesty-eligible had they not been arrested (assuming they are indeed guilty of the crimes with which they have been charge).

The press's failure to identify illegal immigrants who are arrested, tried, convicted, or imprisoned feeds the utterly false notion that they are all solid citizens. That is absolutely not the case.

It's long past time for law enforcement to identify the immigration status of non-citizens accused of and convicted of crimes with full transparency, and for the press to report it.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.