(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused CBS News of being back to its old tricks after it edited an interview to paint gang-affiliated El Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia in a more favorable light.
“This morning, I joined CBS to report the facts about Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” Noem wrote in a post on X. “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.”
Noem offered a litany of offenses to justify the ongoing detention of Abrego Garcia, who is facing possible deportation to Uganda after activist judges demanded his return from El Salvador.
“The one thing that we will continue to do is make sure he doesn’t walk free in the United States of America,” Noem said during an appearance Sunday on “Face the Nation.”
“This individual was a known human smuggler, MS-13 gang member and an individual who was a wife beater and someone so perverted that he solicited nude photos from minors,” she continued. “Even his fellow traffickers told him to knock it off. He was sick with what he was doing and how he was treating small children. So, 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”
The edited version of the CBS News clip included only the first sentence before cutting away to another question.
It is unclear whether CBS may have cut the response for legal reasons after Abrego Garcia’s legal team asked a federal judge earlier in the week to impose a gag order on Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The allegation comes less than two months since its parent company, Paramount, settled a $16 million lawsuit with President Donald Trump over the deceptive editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Democrat candidate Kamala Harris.
That fueled speculation that part of the settlement may have required the network to pull the plug on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” although others say Colbert’s poor ratings were to blame.
“South Park,” the 27-year-old satirical cartoon that has long aired on Comedy Central, also faced apparent pressure over the Paramount settlement. Rumors circulated that it might be canceled before the show’s creators reached a new deal to continue through Trump’s current presidential term.
— South Park (@SouthPark) July 2, 2025
The show’s first few episodes of the season have lashed out at Trump for his score-settling efforts, while doubling down on its puerile humor by going after Trump’s genitalia and suggesting he was in bed with Satan—a joke it first used in reference to Saddam Hussein during the George W. Bush era.
One episode also lampooned Noem, suggesting that her face frequently melted off her body and had to be reapplied by make-up artists.
Noem initially lashed out, calling the show “lazy” before following the lead of pundit Charlie Kirk by posting an image of her “South Park” caricature as her own social-media avatar.
DHS also used a spoof commercial from the “South Park” episode as an actual recruitment ad for new ICE agents.
https://t.co/nZkBEj3GGi pic.twitter.com/N7cFpDhb7W
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) August 5, 2025
Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
