Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin pushed back on reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested a 5-year-old boy in Minnesota, calling the story a media fabrication.
"The facts don't show it at all," McLaughlin said during a Friday morning appearance on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "This is a horrific smear that we're seeing the mainstream media and politicians on the left, including [former Vice President] Kamala Harris, take and run with."
McLaughlin said the "facts are actually that this little boy was abandoned by his own father" during an attempted detention.
"His own father was being approached by ICE agents when he darted, ran, and abandoned the child," she said.
Federal agents stayed with the child in "frigid temperatures," McLaughlin said, and tried to place him with his mother, "who actually would not take the child into custody."
"Our law enforcement officers actually were taking care of the child, brought him to McDonald's, were playing his favorite music to really calm him down," she said. "There's major riots forming around our law enforcement officers – that is horrendous that the child is having to face this."
She said the child is now "reunited with his father in a federal processing facility," and she urged the public to focus on the facts rather than the media narrative.
McLaughlin also addressed the "day of action" Minnesota activists planned for Friday, saying protesters "clearly don't have the facts or would like to ignore them to further their own agenda."
As evidence, she pointed to what she said ICE is doing on the ground in Minnesota.
"Just yesterday, we arrested a convicted murderer from Laos, an individual who was a 617 Blood gang [member]," McLaughlin said.
She added that ICE has "arrested scores and scores of child pedophiles," arguing that critics who attack immigration enforcement are "emboldening" criminals.
"ICE would not have to have this visible presence on the ground if [Minnesota Gov.] Tim Walz and [Minneapolis Mayor] Jacob Frey would simply let us into their jails," she said. "As we speak, there are 1,360 criminal illegal aliens sitting in Minneapolis' jails."
Minneapolis' sanctuary city policies will likely allow most of those individuals to go free, McLaughlin said, before calling for a modicum of state and local cooperation with federal law enforcement.
"All we are asking for is for them to have state and local cooperation when our law enforcement officers need backup, when they're being attacked, when they're being obstructed," she said. "When we give a call to 911, answer it, give us backup, and also let us into those jails so that we can prevent those violent criminals from going out and creating more American victims."
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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