Thursday’s CBS Mornings continued its recent streak of standing up for illegal immigrants — as opposed to those in favor of upholding our country’s laws on the books — by spotlighting the case of an Irishman who’s been in the U.S. illegally for almost 20 years and, after being detained late last year by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), says his current life inside an El Paso, Texas-area facility is akin to “a modern-day concentration camp.”
As we’ll see, only in the second to last sentence did CBS bring up the fact that Irish national Seamus Culleton has been wanted back across the Atlantic on drug charges for over 25 years. Daily Wire’s Jennie Taer posted on X that, “[i]n one instance, he allegedly threw 25 ecstasy tablets on the ground as he tried to hide them from police.”
Back on the supposedly MAGA-aligned CBS, featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers declared this in a tease: “A married Irish national held by ICE for months compares his detention center to a concentration camp.”
Duthiers also had the lead-in that went right for the shock value and emotional blackmail: “Reports of shocking conditions inside an ICE detention center from a man who’s being detained there. Seamus Culleton was pulled over and arrested by ICE last fall. The Irish national has been in the United States for 17 and was in the process of trying to obtain a green card. His wife is a U.S. citizen. Now, he spent months at a facility in Fort Bliss, Texas.”
WATCH: Thursday’s ‘CBS Mornings’ had a full story expressing disgust that the Trump administration has detained and seeking to deport a man from Ireland who’s been here illegally for almost 20 years and touted as fact his claims that DHS holding facilities are like a “modern-day… pic.twitter.com/3Jgffhr6uM
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 12, 2026
And we’re supposed to believe from all the so-called media reporters that CBS News is now MAGA TV?
Correspondent Shanelle Kaul began the piece with more explosive claims from an interview Culleton gave to Irish state radio: “The best way I could describe it is probably like a modern-day concentration camp.”
Kaul finally spoke, saying Culleton detailed “kid’s-size meals, filthy facilities, rampant sickness, and limited time outdoors,” which “[t]he Department of Homeland Security has called any claim of substandard conditions at ICE facilities false.”
After a soundbite of Culleton lamented he’s unsure “how much more I can take,” Kaul said ICE “apprehended Culleton on September 9 for overstaying a visa” and having “been in the U.S. since 2009, ran a local plastering business in the Boston area, and had no criminal record.”
Kaul left out a key point that said visa he overstayed was only for two weeks. His wife argued they were just about to rectify his immigration status when ICE nabbed him.
To recap, Culleton arrived in the U.S. on a two-week visa in the late 2000s and hasn’t done a thing until quite recently to fix it...and we’re supposed to feel bad for him?
At this point in the story, Kaul gave Homeland Security a second sentence to explain their position: “In a statement, DHS said in part ‘a pending green card application and work authorization does not give someone legal status to be in our country,’ and suggested that Culleton’s detention was the consequence of a choice, not to self-deport.”
She flipped right back to currying more sympathy for Kaul and concluded with the admission about drug charges and that Homeland Security can, in fact, deport anyone whose immigration status is influx (click “expand”):
KAUL: Culleton said this about the process of being transferred to El Paso.
CULLETON: Cuffed, sham willed, we had waist bracelets on, we had ankle bracelets on. We’re shuttled on to a plane in the middle of the night and you don’t know where you’re going. The fear and the, the anxiety and the depression, it’s just — it’s just crazy. It’s just unbelievable.
KAUL: The Irish Daily Mail is reporting that Culleton faced outstanding drug charges there dating back to 2008. Now, under U.S. law, Homeland Security can deport people with pending immigration applications, even if they haven’t been convicted of crimes[.]
To see the relevant CBS transcript from February 12, click here.
