DHS Pushes Back on NBC News’ Fearmongering About U.S. Citizen Arrested at Alabama Immigration Sweep
“Anyone who actively obstructs law enforcement in the performance of their sworn duties, including U.S. citizens, will face consequences which include arrest.”
As we’ve often seen, the mainstream media loves to work in concert with Democrats to whip up fears about ICE operations, sometimes falsely claiming illegal immigrants with no criminal histories have been randomly picked up off the streets.
They’ve also falsely claimed young children who were U.S. citizens were deported out of the country, even though the real story was their mothers were deported and chose to take them with them.
In the latest example of the MSM trying to hide the full story, NBC News amplified a report from the “Noticias Telemundo” program about a U.S. citizen who, along with family members, is alleging agents wrestled him to the ground at an Alabama construction site and arrested him as part of an immigration sweep despite allegedly having a REAL ID:
A U.S.-born citizen who was wrestled into the dirt, handcuffed and detained in a vehicle as part of an immigration raid had a REAL ID on him that was dismissed as fake, the man’s cousin said Friday.
Video of the arrest, aired by Noticias Telemundo, showed authorities grabbing Leonardo Garcia Venegas, 25, while at a job site in Foley, Alabama, on Wednesday and bending his arms behind him. Someone off-camera can be heard yelling, “He’s a citizen.”
Garcia told Noticias Telemundo that authorities took his ID from his wallet and told him it was fake before handcuffing him. REAL ID is the identification U.S. citizens are required by law to have in order to travel through airports and enter federal buildings. It is considered a higher security form of identification.
Here’s the video. If you look to the right at the beginning of it, it looks like an arrest was being made. The man on the left, Garcia Venegas, is in a tussle with an agent before being taken to the ground:
ICE wrestled Alabama worker to the ground & detain him for hours—he is a U.S. citizen.
Young man was begging & shouting, "I am a U.S. citizen"—but that didn't stop ICE agents from dragging him off to a detention center.
Not following due process hurts us all—and our economy.… pic.twitter.com/OXmfi5Vram
— LongTime🤓FirstTime👨💻 (@LongTimeHistory) May 22, 2025
In an interview with Telemundo, the arrested man claimed he was injured in the incident, something his cousin, Shelah Venegas, also alleged, and stated he was only released once he gave the agents his Social Security number.
The impression NBC News wants to give is that agents wrongly arrested a U.S. citizen who had a valid ID and were going to deport him anyway.
The real story, according to DHS, is that the man allegedly attempted to obstruct an arrest:
No. During a targeted worksite operation, the individual in question attempted to obstruct & prevent the lawful arrest of an illegal alien. He physically got in between agents and the subject they were attempting to arrest, refusing to comply with numerous verbal commands.
Anyone who actively obstructs law enforcement in the performance of their sworn duties, including U.S. citizens, will face consequences which include arrest.
No. During a targeted worksite operation, the individual in question attempted to obstruct & prevent the lawful arrest of an illegal alien. He physically got in between agents and the subject they were attempting to arrest, refusing to comply with numerous verbal commands.… https://t.co/HPJeYYAzTB
— Tricia McLaughlin (@TriciaOhio) May 24, 2025
The statement was included in the NBC News piece, but it was several paragraphs down, well after they’d spun their narrative.
If accurate, what may have happened is that Garcia Venegas possibly tried to stop the arrest of his brother, who the article notes is in the country illegally, was also arrested by the agents, and is still being detained.
It’s hard to know for sure exactly what happened, but one thing that is for sure is that there’s always more to the story than the corporate media wants to tell.
-Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter/X.-
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Comments
Liars, damn liars, and then there are DemoncRats and journalists.
This is why I approve of the universal use of body cams on
law enforcement officials.
It serves the dual purpose of documenting the behavior of bad apple LEOs, and shuts off the narratives like this at the source.
Video isn’t perfect evidence, but its better than the alternative.
Really Stacey?
It’s not hard to know
If the msm defends the arrest and deportation of the “Maryland Man”, who won’t they defend?
Trump, that’s who.
“Maryland father”
General Sherman noted “The American press is a disgrace and an affront to a civilized people.”
Since his day, they’ve only gotten worse. You really can’t hate them enough.
A social security number that proves jack nothing as to a person’s citizenship status as the federal government will hand out S.S. numbers (or TINs) to illegals so that they can allegedly pay federal income taxes on all the under the table, cash payroll they make while illegally employed.
I still think that taxing remittances going out of the country (wire, cashier’s check, Zelle, whatever) at 10% of the amount would start communicating to illegal aliens that there’s a price to be paid for being here. Require an address and phone number to the remittances.
The Big, Beautiful Bill that was passed by the House does this at 3.5%. You’re right, not nearly enough, but it’s a start.
Release the bodycam footage. If no footage then shame on DHS for setting themselves up.
As for the media, while a free press is guaranteed they can’t be allowed to spew falsehoods. Perhaps the remedy is for each news program to list their falsehoods at the beginning of their broadcast or on the front page in case of the print news. They shouldn’t be allowed to bury their retractions.
Alternate solution: just ignore them because they lie all the time.
The issue isn’t you and me. The issue are those that don’t yet believe the media lies all the time.
They’re stuck on the “due process” talking point. Guy was detained, identified, then released. Happens all the time, all around the US. If I didn’t know the press believes their job is to support the destruction of the US, I’d swear they’re too incompetent to hold any job.
There’s absolutely no reason to believe this US Citizen was arrested by ICE as an illegal Alien. ICE has every reason not to do so to preclude this sort of negative coverage. Take a quick look on the internet and you will find routine LEO interactions escalated by bystanders and/or passengers who want to hold Court on the street. If some goofball obstructs or interferes with LEO during their investigation or effecting an arrest then the goofball is often gonna be a bonus arrest. Let LEO do their job b/c you might beat the charge in CT but you won’t beat the ride to jail on the street. This goofball is gonna catch charges for obstruction and should get a bonus for resistance without violence and has himself to blame.
The truth never matters to sh*tlib media. The ends (appeasing their chronic, unrelenting cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome) justify the means.
No matter how much you think you hate the media, it still isn’t enough.
I’d be for requiring MSM to provide equal time and equal space for rebuttals of falsehoods. Want a front page story above the fold? You get half width while the gov gets the other half. Prime time hour show? We get the following hour.