Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is ripping into CBS News for omitting her full answers during an interview on Face the Nation. The network cut almost 25 percent of her answers for their Sunday show, where Ms. Noem spoke about the ongoing efforts and operations to deport illegal aliens. She also expounded more about the ongoing case against Abrego Garcia, but CBS News took the hatchet to that as well (via DHS):
This morning, I joined CBS to report the facts about Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Instead, CBS shamefully edited the interview to whitewash the truth about this MS-13 gang member and the threat he poses to American public safety.
— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) August 31, 2025
Watch for the part of my interview that @CBS tried to… pic.twitter.com/28fsGZug48
During the broadcast, CBS edits deprived the American people from hearing the truth about MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The following 25 seconds were cut from her answer:
“This individual was a known human smuggler, MS-13 gang member, an individual who was a wife beater, and someone who was um so perverted that he solicited nude photos from minors. And even his fellow human traffickers told him to knock it off. He was so sick in what he was doing and how he was treating small children. So, uh, he needs to never be in the United States of America and our administration is making sure we're doing all that we can to bring him to justice.”
During an answer to a question about Secretary Noem’s successful arrest of 5,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles, CBS cut the following:
“...And many of these individuals were people who have, you know, conducted horrific um horrific activities against American citizens, trafficking of children and pedophiles. And so that's uh one of the things that the people of a LA can be grateful for is that they don't have those bad actors, those people on their streets anymore because of the work of President Trump and his administration.”
CBS also edited out Secretary Noem’s answers explaining how she is fighting for the American people and ensuring taxpayer dollars are being spent correctly:
“...You know, in Washington, D.C., I rarely run into anybody who says, ‘I'm a lobbyist for the American taxpayer.’ Well, guess what, Kristi Noem is. Every day I get up and I think the American people are paying for this. Should they? And are these dollars doing what the law says they should be doing? I'm going to make sure that they go there and they're spent what's appropriate according to the law and that the taxpayers understand that it's a worthwhile effort.”
CBS also thought it in the interest of their viewers to edit out Secretary Noem’s expectations for all employees of DHS to work on the American people’s behalf:
“...And my hope is that every single person within the Department of Homeland Security, but also in this government gets up every day wanting to make America safer, wanting to do their job and to contribute to that in a very productive way.”
Likewise, CBS cut an entire answer from Secretary Noem explaining how DHS is maintaining its standards as it hires 10,000 new agents to re-establish law and order by year’s end.
O’KEEFE: “All right. So, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is aiming to hire another 10,000 officers by the end of this year, Nearly double the size of the current force. Basic training is being reduced from 13 weeks to 8 weeks in an attempt to accelerate the hiring and the onboarding of these officers. Uh there's signing bonuses. Some age caps have been lifted. Did the hiring standards get lowered in part to meet this daily quota of 3,000 arrests?
NOEM: Oh, what we've done as far as recruitment, and again, Ed, we've got over 130,000 people that have applied to be a part of that 10,000 new hires within ICE, but we did not reduce any of the qualifications or time frames. What we did was that we made sure that we were being much more efficient in getting these officers out on the street and giving them more opportunity to get trained uh quickly and recognize the previous training that they had. if they were a previous law enforcement officer or someone that wanted to come back out of retirement, we facilitated that where before the federal government had ignored those individuals or put them through classes that they had already qualified for or become masters at. So, I think that streamlining is what needed to happen. And we're so grateful that so many other retired law enforcement officers or those from different areas of the country say, "Listen, I want to be a part of what ICE is doing because these individuals are out there making sure that they're going after dangerous criminals and bringing them to justice and making sure that if they're here in this country and they've perpetuated these crimes and violence that they have the opportunity to go home to their own home country and place consequences there as well."
It’s a situation that’s both shocking and not entirely unexpected.