Tuesday’s CBS Mornings sought to give viewers a look at “how things turn[ed] chaotic” in Minneapolis with correspondent Lilia Luciano, but she muddied the waters by blaming conservative journalist Nick Shirley for the deadly chaos and refused to acknowledge Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) had removed dangerous criminals from the Twin Cities.
Still floored by how ridiculous this segment was on Tuesday's 'CBS Mornings' that downplayed the notion that CBP and ICE have removed dangerous illegal aliens (refusing to name a single one), blamed Nick Shirley for the chaos in Minneapolis, and commiserated with a hipster coffee… pic.twitter.com/NyOcTexL1O
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 28, 2026
Featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers had a similarly biased lead-in, including downplaying the reality of criminals taken off the streets:
Many Americans have been shocked by the images and stories coming out of Minneapolis these last few weeks. The White House says the surge in Homeland Security agents to the area was about combating fraud along with deporting criminal undocumented immigrants. But here’s the thing, many arrested people have no criminal record. Some say they were stopped at random. So, how did things turn chaotic?
The reliably liberal Luciano commiserated with a bearded, hipster-looking, white male owner of a South Minneapolis coffee shop who’s clearly suffering from liberal psychosis since he told her the city is “in crisis mode” and fears he can simply “be shot and killed” for “walk[ong] out of my door and…help people.”
Resisting and impeding law enforcement was never on Luciano’s mind. Instead, it was to smugly wonder “how exactly did we get here” and refer to December when “Homeland Security announced an immigration operation dubbed Metro Surge in Minneapolis” as “Minnesota had already been under scrutiny over a massive public fraud scandal that involves some locals and some members of the state’s Somali community” even though “many had been investigated and prosecuted.”
Then came the part when she blamed Shirley:
CBS's Lilia Luciano blames @NickShirleyy for the Minneapolis chaos and the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti: "The [Minneapolis] controversy exploded on December 26th when a conservative influencer released a now-viral YouTube video claiming to expose the public fraud." pic.twitter.com/F7hjfYFmbv
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 27, 2026
A soundbite from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem later, Luciano condensed a few weeks into two sentences ahead of Minneapolis Democrat Mayor Jacob Frey’s now-infamous f-bomb: “By January 5, some 2,000 additional federal immigration agents were being deployed to the Twin Cities, its biggest operation yet. Two days later, Renee Good was killed, setting off major protests.”
Instead of spotlighting or even doing her own homework on one of the “Worst of the Worst,” Luciano found someone whom she said “is in the U.S. legally on a visa” and “he spent roughly 24 hours detained and was almost sent out of the state before his lawyer intervened.”
She went kid-gloves route with that guy, but was more adversarial with the Minnesota Republican Party chair (click “expand”):
LUCIANO: Alex Plechash is the Chairman of Minnesota’s Republican Party. [TO PLECHASH] Was it necessary, though, to bring all of these agents because the city or the state were not cooperating with federal agencies? Has this been an issue before?
ALEX PLECHASH: It hasn’t really been an issue before, except I think common sense tells you that sanctuary policies could lead to this kind of thing. Now, in terms of the government sending all of these people in, all I can think is that they’re trying to make a statement.
LUCIANO [TO PLECHASH]: And what’s that statement?
PLECHASH: And that statement is that you’re going to have to start following the law.
She closed where she began with the deranged white hippie, whom she said has a “more simple” solution in which “ICE leav[es]” completely.
Luciano concluded with more slanted analysis, leaving her piece devoid of any consideration for the far-left rioting and agitating of law enforcement (e.g. blocking traffic, getting in the face of law enforcement, hotel protests, etc.):
We are waiting to hear back from DHS about Navos’ particular case, and while Vice President J.D. Vance has denied that agents are racially profiling people, we heard last week from the Police Chief in nearby Brooklyn Park that his own police officers, while off duty, were being targeted and Vlad, every single one of them, he said, was a person of color.
To see the relevant CBS transcript from January 287, click here.
