In the aftermath of DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin announcing her resignation, MS NOW reporter Jacob Soboroff accused her of spreading misinformation when, in fact, he was the one misinforming his viewers.
Antonia Hylton filled in for Chris Hayes on Monday's All In show. She began by asking Soboroff what it has been like having to interact with McLaughlin to get information about immigration issues. He began by taking a shot at ex-DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen from the first Donald Trump administration: "It's been a bit of deja vu quite frankly, and I think that Tricia McLaughlin comes from a long line, I think it's fair to say, of Trump administration officials dealing with immigration policy that have been less than forthright with the truth."
Referring to the other anti-Trump guest, former Trump DHS official Miles Taylor, Soboroff continued:
And Miles Taylor knows this well and has spoken out since his time in the administration about this to Kirstjen Nielsen, who Miles worked for during the first family separation policy during the first Trump administration -- very famously said, "We do not have a policy of separating families at the border, period." That was on June 17, 2018. And the American people are not stupid -- they saw right through it.
It has been previously documented by NewsBusters that in June 2018 Nielsen forthrightly announced that those who crossed the border illegally would be detained and separated from their children, but Soboroff prefers to harp on one of her answers to a question to portray her as dishonest.
The MS NOW reporter then repeated more previously debunked information when he claimed that illegal alien Narciso Barranco did not swing his weed whacker at Border Patrol agents in Los Angeles even though there is video of him doing just that. Here's Soboroff:
And Tricia McLaughlin has basically taken a similar posture with the American people. The stories that I have reported on, whether it was Narciso Barranco, the landscaper who was violently detained outside of that IHOP in Santa Ana, California. She accused him of attacking agents with a weed whacker, despite the fact that the video showed him retreating.
Hylton then went to Taylor, who fretted about who would replace McLaughlin, and then claimed that DHS is violating constitutional rights.
When getting his chance to follow up, Soboroff complained that immigration enforcement has been too harsh all the way back to the Clinton administration, and talked up liberal protesters pushing congressional Democrats to go further in enacting laws to protect illegal aliens.
Earlier in the day, on Ana Cabrera Reports, reporter Vaughn Hillyard accused McLaughlin of exaggerating how many ICE detainees had criminal records even though his own network has been recently highlighting a CBS News study reporting that more than 60 percent of detainees had either been convicted or charged with non-immigration crimes, which is close to what McLaughlin has repeatedly cited in her television appearances.
Here's Hilliard: "She is somebody who has suggested that DHS data had shown that the great majority of the individuals who had been deported and detained under the Trump administration were convicted criminals. Much of that data that was put out there came into deep questions as you began to unwrap some of the numbers."
Transcripts follow:
MS NOW's All In with Chris Hayes
February 17, 2026
8:08 p.m. Eastern
ANTONIA HYLTON, FILL-IN HOST: I guess, take us down memory lane. You and I -- we both have worked with and spoken to Tricia McLaughlin a decent amount over the past. So what has it been like for you trying to report out your stories and get to the truth in your interactions with her?
JACOB SOBOROFF: You know what, Antonia? It's been a bit of deja vu quite frankly, and I think that Tricia McLaughlin comes from a long line, I think it's fair to say, of Trump administration officials dealing with immigration policy that have been less than forthright with the truth.
And Miles Taylor knows this well and has spoken out since his time in the administration about this to Kirsten Nielsen, who Miles worked for during the first family separation policy during the first Trump administration -- very famously said, "We do not have a policy of separating families at the border, period." That was on June 17, 2018. And the American people are not stupid -- they saw right through it. They stood in the streets and they protested.
And Tricia McLaughlin has basically taken a similar posture with the American people. The stories that I have reported on, whether it was Narciso Barranco, the landscaper who was violently detained outside of that IHOP in Santa Ana, California. She accused him of attacking agents with a weed whacker, despite the fact that the video showed him retreating. He was never charged with a crime for doing that.
Any Lucia Lopez, the 19-year-old coming home from Babson College who was deported to Honduras while she was going to see her parents in San Antonio -- she defended that deportation despite the fact that the administration later admitted they did it in error. Even Nory Sontay Ramos, who I reported on that high school star student track star who was taken at a routine immigration check, and she defended those types of immigration hearings as well.
The American people know exactly what this administration is doing. Doesn't matter how many times Tricia McLaughlin tried to defend it. The list goes on and on and on. I can think of many more examples. We don't have enough time to go through all of them -- the ones in which she didn't tell the American people the truth about what we could plainly see with our own eyeballs.
(...)
HYLTON: Do you think her departure signals a real change strategically in terms of the way policy is going to roll out? Or do you think we're going to get someone else who just brings more of the same?
MILES TAYLOR, EX-DHS OFFICIAL: I shudder to think who comes next. And -- and you and Jacob both know this incredibly well, but I have to align with what Jacob said at the top of the program. The administration, whether it was the first Trump administration or this one, has tried to portray that cruelty is a consequence, an inadvertent consequence of policies that Renee Good, that Alex Pretti, that family separation, that all of these things are unfortunate mistakes. That is not true.
That's where the lie machine starts at DHS. It's where it started when I was there. The cruelty, as has been said often, is the point here. It is the point. And -- sometimes they let the mask slip and they say that. In private they do. And in public, you've been seeing that happen more and more where they admit the point is to deter the political opposition. You say, "Wait a second, I thought this was about immigration." "Oh, well, we also want to send ICE to the polls."
And I think that McLaughlin has only continued that tradition. She's probably become more of a little Trump than the other little Trumps in the administration. But what she hasn't been able to cover up in her tenure is that there has been an extraordinary violation of constitutional rights by this department, and that's because we've had people brave enough to take one of these and to go outside and to film it.
And I do want to say something about this shutdown, because Republicans are going to say Democrats are holding the government hostage. I want to clarify something, and I'm not a Democrat. I'm saying this as someone who's watched this -- who's been in that department in two presidential administrations. Democrats aren't demanding policy changes.
They are demanding compliance with the United States Constitution. There have been violations by this department of the 1st Amendment rights of Americans and the 4th Amendment rights of Americans and the 2nd Amendment rights of Americans and the 10th Amendment and the 14th Amendment. And those are just the ones that come to my mind right now. This isn't about Democrats and Republicans. This is about whether the Constitution is still a viable document in this country or not. And DHS is at ground zero of that debate.
HYLTON: Well, Jacob, to Miles' point there, do you think that this laundry list, the list of demands that Democrats are sending to Republicans right now, when you talk to voters, to protesters that I know you speak with every week, do you think they see those demands as actually being enough because so many of them are just sort of basically what other law enforcement agencies already have to do and comply with day in and day out. Do they think that this list is enough, given just the outrage, the horror that there is just so deeply felt across this country right now?
SOBOROFF: Not people who have spent enough time thinking about the system to understand that where we are today is a product of decades of bipartisan, deterrence-based, punitive-based immigration policy that started in the modern era in the Clinton administration, and under every President of the United States -- Democratic or Republican -- cruelty was used as a tool of immigration enforcement.
No amount of unmasking ICE agents, no amount of identifying themselves, is going to change the fact that we have a for profit detention system largely in the United States of America that criminalizes people who come here seeking a better life, treats them as points on a bar graph or a chart, or talks about them like they're the weather, the flow, the surge, the inundation, the invasion, in the words of this administration.
Joe Biden promised a wholesale departure from the cruelty of the first Trump administration -- fair, safe, humane, orderly immigration policy. And we ended up back here. I think the American people are very skeptical, and that is why you are seeing people in the streets in the numbers that we have seen in Minnesota, in Charlotte, in Chicago, here in Los Angeles, outside the hallways of 26 Federal Plaza in New York, because it's not enough, frankly, to rely on our lawmakers going to Capitol Hill and saying they're going to change things. We've been hearing that for decades as it comes to immigration.
And I think that the American people now have not only are they not stupid, and what Tricia Mclaughlin has been telling them they know is not true, but they know it's going to take a lot more than relying on elected officials to go up to Capitol Hill and change the immigration system and the cruelty that we've been seeing in the streets.
(...)
Fox's America's Newsroom
September 9, 2025
10:10 a.m. Eastern
TRICIA McLAUGHLIN, DHS ASSISTANT SECRETARY: Seventy percent of those illegal aliens who have been arrested under this administration have prior convictions or pending charges. And that doesn't even include those who have been arrested who don't have rap sheets in the U.S. but have rap sheets in their countries of origin. They might be a gang member -- they might have a human rights violation against them.
(...)
Fox's America Reports
November 11, 2025
1:19 p.m.
McLAUGHLIN: In Chicago, we've seen fantastic results -- the arrests of about 5,000 illegal aliens, 70 percent of which are -- have past criminal convictions or pending criminal charges against them.
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Fox's America's Newsroom
January 19, 2026
9:08 a.m.
McLAUGHLIN: The facts on the ground, Dana, is that 70 percent of those that have been arrested under the Trump administration -- seven, zero -- either have prior criminal convictions or pending criminal charges against them. That does not even include known or suspected terrorists of which we've arrested over 1,000. That doesn't include gang membership -- that doesn't even include being wanted for a violent crime in your country of origin or a third country.
(...)
MSNOW's Katy Tur Reports
February 9, 2026
2:48 p.m.
(discussing a study by CBS News that more than 60 percent of arrestees either had criminal convictions or criminal charges in addition to "civil immigration violations")
JACOB SOBOROFF: The larger picture is what we have seen anecdotally over and over and over again. They are not going after the worst of the worst, and you cannot institute the largest mass deportation program by going after only the worst or the worst.
KATY TUR: Is it because there are not that many of the quote, unquote "worst of the worst" to go after -- that if you wanted to do mass deportations, if you want to exceed the number of deportations that President Obama did, if you want a million people a year, that you're going to have to get people who are not violent criminals?
(...)
MSNOW's Ana Cabrera Reports
February 17, 2026
11:32 a.m.
VAUGHN HILLYARD: She is somebody who has suggested that DHS data had shown that the great majority of the individuals who had been deported and detained under the Trump administration were convicted criminals. Much of that data that was put out there came into deep questions as you began to unwrap some of the numbers.
