Both on Sunday's Velshi show and on Tuesday's Morning Joe on MS NOW, the claim was repeated that only 16 illegal aliens arrested in Chicago out of over 600 were dangerous criminals even though more than 1,100 who were already deported were not covered in that calculation.
On his eponymous Sunday morning show, Ali Velshi compared liberal activists defending illegal aliens from deportation to the Civil Rights Movement as he spoke with frequent guests -- Fordham University's Christina Greer and New York City comptroller Brad Lander. Referring to the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois, where liberal activists often harass immigration enforcement agents, Velshi posed:
I haven't had a conversation with the mayor of Broadview, but I have some real distaste about what he said: "These are out of town protesters." I want you to take us back to the Civil Rights Movement. There were lots of out-of-town protesters. That was actually the point. You go anywhere you need to go where you can change and help things. Great if it's in your city, but it's okay if it's someone else's city, right?
Illegal immigration "helps things"?
A bit later, Lander brought up the recent court ruling that calls for the possibility of more than 600 ICE detainees from the Chicago area to be released with a small portion so far categorized as dangerous criminals:
But in Chicago this week, ICE was forced to release in federal court, you know, information of the 607 immigrants they've detained -- only 16 were in any way deemed to be a threat to anybody's safety. So 97 percent of people are either U.S. citizens or people who are here seeking asylum and not causing anybody any harm.
Velshi then suggested that few such criminals are being targeted by ICE now:
So this threat is an interesting thing, Christina, because Donald Trump started by saying it was murderers and rapists when he started his, you know, his first election. But then it became about, you know, the terrorists or whatever the case is. MS-13 -- everybody was MS-13 or Tren de Aragua. They seem to just have skipped all that part.
Greer then tied in race, leading to agreement from Velshi:
CHRISTINA GREER, FORDHAM UNIVERSITY: Yeah. No, we're not there anymore. Now, it's just brown people who shouldn't be here.
ALI VELSHI: Yeah.
GREER: That is part of the larger Trump administration project. And Republicans have to own it. They -- they're in lockstep with the President, so he's essentially saying, "I just -- we can pick up brown people off the street. It doesn't matter if they're documented or undocumented." I mean, they use that horrible language of legal and illegal...
On Tuesday's Morning Joe, co-host Willie Geist also made the claim that only 16 dangerous aliens were arrested in Chicago:
WILLIE GEIST: Here's the core of the problem. The Trump -- by the Trump administration's own data released over the weekend in Chicago, in these immigration raids, they've arrested 607 people -- 16 of them -- one-six -- according to the Trump administration, actually pose a safety risk because of their alleged criminal history. So when he said during the campaign, "We're going to seal the border, and we're going to get the rapists and the murderers" and all the people he always talks about out of the country, Americans said, "Yeah, that seems like a good idea."
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Right, of course.
GEIST: But when your batting average is 16 out of 607, that's when Americans go, "Whoa, this is not what we voted for."
He's not paying attention to the polls. A majority support deporting illegal aliens whether they're violent criminals or not. Last month, The New York Times sadly reported "the share of registered voters who favor deporting immigrants living in the country illegally — 54 percent — has remained unchanged....More specifically, 51 percent said they thought the government was deporting mostly people who 'should be deported.'"
The order covered those detained in the Chicago area between June 11 and October 7 during which time more than 1,800 were arrested, so the analysis does not include all of those who were detained in that period.
Transcripts follow:
Velshi
November 16, 2025
10:31 a.m. Eastern
ALI VELSHI: The Trump administration is set on seizing control of American cities -- specifically cities lived in and led by Democrats. Chicago has arguably gotten the worst of it so far. Federal troops controlling the streets in what's been described as military-style ICE raids that have shaken communities and broken up families.
(...)
10:35 a.m.
VELSHI: Christina, I haven't had a conversation with the mayor of Broadview, but I have some real distaste about what he said: "These are out of town protesters." I want you to take us back to the Civil Rights Movement. There were lots of out-of-town protesters. That was actually the point. You go anywhere you need to go where you can change and help things. Great if it's in your city, but it's okay if it's someone else's city, right?
CHRISTINA GREER, FORDHAM UNIVERSITY: Right, absolutely. And I wanted to just put a pin on a point that you made. These are interfaith pastors and religious clergy members who are coming together. So it's not just one denomination, just like we saw in the Civil Rights Movement, people all across the spectrum saying this is not right from a whole host of reasons -- not from an American democratic perspective, from a moral clarity perspective. That's one.
And then two, this, this idea of, "Oh, they're out of town. So that's why we could behave this way." Well, the whole point is, as Americans, we are seeing this happen, as you said, not just in Democratic-led cities, but primarily in cities that are led by African American mayors, and I think New York knows that their time possibly will come because the President has promised as such. But we can't just sort of off as sort of, "Well, they're out of towners," as though that justifies --
VELSHI: This is still your country. Charlotte is still my country. Chicago is my country.
(...)
BRAD LANDER (D-NEW YORK CITY COMPTROLLER): But in Chicago this week, ICE was forced to release in federal court, you know, information of the 607 immigrants they've detained -- only 16 were in any way deemed to be a threat to anybody's safety. So 97 percent of people are either U.S. citizens or people who are here seeking asylum and not causing anybody any harm.
VELSHI: So this threat is an interesting thing, Christina, because Donald Trump started by saying it was murderers and rapists when he started his, you know, his first election. But then it became about, you know, the terrorists or whatever the case is. MS-13 -- everybody was MS-13 or Tren de Aragua. They seem to just have skipped all that part.
GREER: Yeah. No, we're not there anymore. Now, it's just brown people who shouldn't be here.
VELSHI: Yeah.
GREER: That is part of the larger Trump administration project. And Republicans have to own it. They -- they're in lockstep with the President, so he's essentially saying, "I just -- we can pick up brown people off the street. It doesn't matter if they're documented or undocumented." I mean, they use that horrible language of legal and illegal, which is absolutely --
VELSHI: Right, because -- and Brad (Lander) has made this point, that you can be undocumented and be going through a legal process on an ongoing basis -- at 26 Federal Plaza -- and then they lock you up.
GREER: And how are we to know? And so the fact that so many communities are living in fear, right. The fact that ICE agents are coming and just observing, you know, soup kitchens, they're observing people going to work. They're observing people dropping their kids off at school. The point is to terrorize people.
VELSHI: Right.
(...)
Morning Joe
November 18, 2025
7:36 a.m.
CLAIRE McCASKILL, MSNOW CONTRIBUTOR: Mayor Williams, I noticed in Charlottesville there were actually some -- Charlotte there were actually some arrests that were made. For example, a U.S. citizen had his windshield smashed by masked combatants. What steps can you take as mayors to protect the people in your communities that have every legal right to be there and are being singled out simply because they're brown?
(...)
SCARBOROUGH: Let's kind of go behind the story here because I -- there's something I really -- I don't understand other than the -- how inhumane these ICE raids are -- how un-American it is to smash windshields of American citizens, drag scores of American --
(cross talk)
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Traumatize people and children.
SCARBOROUGH: -- citizens off, get kids ripped out of Montessori schools, getting moms ripped out of school lines waiting for their children. You know, the school -- I mean, all of that is so obviously bad morally but also just if you don't care about that -- if you just -- it's bad politically. And now you've got the most famous American on the planet and in Heaven, Pope Leo coming out and he has -- he's saying you can't be pro-life -- you can't call yourself pro-life if you're for the inhumane treatment of these children of Christ, right? The bishops are doing it.
All these people are doing it. As I said yesterday, when we spoke with Donald Trump in November, that's one of the thing that he said he understood. He didn't want images of children being ripped from the arms of mothers. That's all we've seen. This is even worse in the second term than it was in the first term.
(...)
WILLIE GEIST: Here's the core of the problem. The Trump -- by the Trump administration's own data released over the weekend in Chicago, in these immigration raids, they've arrested 607 people -- 16 of them -- one six -- according to the Trump administration, actually pose a safety risk because of their alleged criminal history. So when he said during the campaign, "We're going to seal the border, and we're going to get the rapists and the murderers" and all the people he always talks about out of the country, Americans said, "Yeah, that seems like a good idea."
SCARBOROUGH: Right, of course.
GEIST: But when your batting average is 16 out of 607, that's when Americans go, "Whoa, this is not what we voted for."
