On Monday, CBS Evening News highlighted a report on immigration in California that’s sole purpose was to generate fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement not just in illegal immigrants, but in all Hispanic-Americans. Correspondent Adam Yamaguchi, highlighting the unwarranted fear that some citizens were feeling that they could be deported, tried his best to reaffirm those fears by pointing to a California mayor who carries his passport with him.
He spoke with Pasadena, California Mayor Victor Gordo, who expressed his concerns that he, a legal U.S. citizen, might be deported:
There’s a very real, palpable sense of fear. If they look like an immigrant, then they`re suspect. What was the probable cause there, other than they had brown skin? It`s racial profiling. It's borderline stalking and hunting.
Yamaguchi also emphasized that Gordo did not go anywhere without his passport in case he was racially profiled.
Conspicuously absent from the focus on Gordo was his party affiliation, which was Democratic, a key fact for the audience to realize his passport shtick was all performative.
Of course, there were extremely few cases in which a U.S. citizen had been mistakenly detained or deported. Of those arrests of U.S. citizens, the majority were for impeding or assaulting officers as they were making other arrests. Their concern was not on the appearance of the people who obstructed justice, but rather on the crime they were committing.
This idea of ICE agents arresting based solely on race was not founded. But both Gordo and Martin Chairez, a Santa Ana minister interviewed by Yamaguchi, hammered home on it. When asked by Yamaguchi if he was afraid, Chairez responded, “Yes. I mean, I`m going to be racially profiled. It's going to happen.”
As Chairez and Gordo expressed their concerns, Yamaguchi himself gave a one-sided recounting of the story. CBS’s segment never once used the phrase “illegal immigrant,” making the point to instead refer to such people as “undocumented.” Now couple that with Gordo’s passport theatrics and it becomes more apparent how they were stoking fear.
His colorful language always placed ICE in a negative light and elevated the illegal immigrants who had been detained. Yamaguchi reported:
This is a site where six undocumented day laborers were helping with wildfire recovery efforts, waiting for the bus to take them to work, when they were snatched up by armed, masked agents and essentially disappeared. Disappeared, their families say, because they often don't know where they're being detained.
As important as wildfire recovery work was, that did not just excuse the fact that they were in the country illegally. ICE agents, on the other hand, were seemingly made out to be the villains for wearing masks and carrying weapons, something the agency had expressly stated as being necessary for agents’ safety considering frequent attempts to dox them. Even the idea of immigrants “disappearing” was inaccurate considering ICE agents had no obligation to give that information unless properly requested.
As much as CBS and other news sources would like to make ICE’s operations seem racially motivated, there was evidence to support that idea. In reality, it’s very clear that isn’t the case since, on the rare event of ICE agents arresting someone mistakenly, the person was allowed to leave without any incident. For law-abiding citizens, there was nothing to fear from ICE.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read.
CBS Evening News
June 30, 2025
6:45:31 p.m. EasternJOHN DICKERSON: President Trump is heading to Florida tomorrow for the opening of a detention center for undocumented immigrants. It’s the Everglades, and state officials are calling it Alligator Alcatraz. This is part of the president`s immigration crackdown, and Adam Yamaguchi reports the threat of arrest is creating fear in immigrant communities in Southern California.
(Cuts to video)
MAN #1: Hey, leave him alone, bro.
ADAM YAMAGUCHI (voiceover): Each new arrest brings the plea of a son.
MAN #2: That wasn't correct and that was not just.
YAMAGUCHI: A daughter.
WOMAN #1: I just want my dad to come home safe.
YAMAGUCHI: Or neighbor.
WOMAN #2: What you’re doing is kidnapping.
WOMAN #3: People are being ripped away from their law-abiding lives.
YAMAGUCHI: Social media has documented ICE agents as they haul people away. Some of the raids across Southern California have targeted car washes, shopping centers and parks, including here in Pasadena, where Victor Gordo is mayor.
VICTOR GORDO (Mayor of Pasadena, CA): There’s a very real, palpable sense of fear. If they look like an immigrant, then they`re suspect.
YAMAGUCHI: There’s this heaviness and emptiness in the streets here, and once in a while you can see some signs of what’s been going on. Somebody left candles here.
This is a site where six undocumented day laborers were helping with wildfire recovery efforts, waiting for the bus to take them to work, when they were snatched up by armed, masked agents and essentially disappeared. Disappeared, their families say, because they often don't know where they're being detained.
GORDO: What was the probable cause there, other than they had brown skin? It`s racial profiling. It's borderline stalking and hunting.
ADAM YAMAGUCHI: An hour's drive south of Pasadena, in the heavily Latino community of Santa Ana...
MARTIN CHAIREZ (Minister): It's no longer a safe place to be for a lot of people.
YAMAGUCHI: ... Martin Chairez is a minister who arrived from Mexico at age nine. He`s among those known as Dreamers, people brought into the U.S. as children who hope to get its citizenship.
Are you afraid?
CHAIREZ: Yes. I mean, I`m going to be racially profiled. It's going to happen.
YAMAGUCHI: He tells us, much of his ministry has moved online because people are too scared to go out.
CHAIREZ: In our last gathering on Zoom, one of the moms in tears, her main prayer is to be invisible. I mean, that's her prayer every day: "God, make me invisible."
GORDO: We have to ask ourselves as a society, is this who we are? Is this who we want to be?
YAMAGUCHI: Now Pasadena`s mayor says he won't go anywhere without his U.S. passport.
(Cuts to live)
DICKERSON: Adam Yamaguchi reporting from Southern California.
