Drawing from Van Leeuwen’s Social Actor Network model and Reisigl and Wodak’s discourse-historical approach, this paper explores how discursive strategies and different text features are used to construct particular meaning in the social world. This paper explores how political elites' voices are included in news reporting to depict refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia as illegals, threats and victims, which mirror their ideological position. It also investigates voices that foreground their situation and advocate rule mitigation.