US Politics
CBS News joins Kristi Noem on ICE raid after Bari Weiss’ 60 Minutes controversy
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CBS Evening News embedded with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday as part of the ongoing DHS crackdown on alleged fraud and immigration violations in the Minneapolis area.
The Trump administration official’s appearance is one of the first major interviews of new network editor-in-chief Bari Weiss’s recent relaunch of the storied program with new lead anchor Tony Dokoupil.
During Tuesday’s segment, Noem could be seen in tactical gear personally accompanying heavily armed DHS agents to arrest a man named Tomas Espin Tapia.
Tapia, Trump administration officials told The Independent, illegally entered the U.S. from Ecuador in 2022 and had an active warrant for sexual assault in Connecticut.
In an accompanying sit-down interview with reporter Nicole Sganga, Noem defended the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown in Minneapolis and downplayed the president’s recent, inflammatory comments comparing Somalis in the area to “garbage.”
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“I’m focused on policing the streets, not policing President Trump’s words,” Noem said.
“If you think you can come to this country and get rich defrauding the American people, think again,” she wrote in a statement on X, resharing a clip of the segment. “We will root out every case of fraud we find from Minneapolis to California to New York.”
The Trump administration is ramping up an operation in the Minneapolis area that could include as many as 2,000 agents.
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The White House launched the campaign after a viral video alleged fraud at federally supported day care centers. Local officials dispute claims in the video.
Noem’s interview also comes after another high-profile CBS show, 60 Minutes, was told by Weiss shortly before airtime last month to pull a planned segment about how DHS sent hundreds of migrants to a notorious Salvadoran prison, an editorial decision widely panned inside and outside the CBS Newsroom.
Weiss reportedly told producers, who had cleared the segment through multiple layers of internal review, that an on-camera response from a Trump administration official was needed.
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Internal deliberations around the segment, as well as a version of the clip itself, leaked online and in the media. In one of the leaks, the segment’s correspondent, Sharyn Alfonsi, accused Weiss of giving the Trump administration a “‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find “inconvenient.”
Weiss’s tenure at CBS, which has reportedly been marked by constant infighting, has been under heavy scrutiny, given the the highly politicized atmosphere in which she took the reins at the broadcaster.
Weiss’s decision making around the CECOT segment sparked claims she was influenced by political pressures, owing to CBS parent company Paramount Skydance’s ongoing bid to take over Warner Bros. Discovery, a move that would need federal clearance.
In August, Skydance and Paramount officially merged following a complicated process dogged with accusations of political meddling.
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Skydance was founded by David Ellison, son of the billionaire Oracle tech mogul and Trump supporter Larry Ellison.
Shortly before the merger was complete, with approval hanging in the balance, Paramount agreed to a $16 million settlement in a lawsuit from Trump against 60 Minutes, which had alleged it deceptively edited an interview with his 2024 rival Kamala Harris.