In spite of covering the story three times in one week of a landscaper being arrested by ICE, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace avoided showing viewers incriminating video of the illegal alien appearing to swing a weed whacker at two law enforcement officers.
MSNBC's Deadline: White House
June 23, 2025
NICOLLE WALLACE: A brutal new video shows just exactly what mass deportation looks like under the Trump administration. Alarming footage of approximately seven masked men wearing U.S. Customs and Border Patrol vests pinning down and beating a father of three U.S. Marines while others watched before forcing him into an unmarked vehicle. Take a look for yourself.
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JACOB SOBOROFF: Two hundred pound plus men kneeling -- just watch it -- beating a man who was out there cutting grass. He was cutting grass. And these heavily armed masked agents who don't identify themselves to people who are alleging that he tried to attack them with his weed whacker when, in fact, if you watch the video that DHS has put up, he was being sprayed with some kind of pepper spray as he ran away. They're ubiquitous all over the city right now, and the tactic is deliberately to terrorize -- to scare people.
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WALLACE: The political reality is that 15 (percent), 12 (percent), and nine (percent) -- those are the numbers of Americans that support deporting people who have American-born as this person -- as this gentleman Narciso does. ... They don't support deporting people with jobs. They don't support deporting people with jobs. So all of the raids are taking place -- where are they taking place? At Home Deport parking lots, as restaurants, in agricultural -- those are all people at work. Those are all -- they're only looking for people with jobs. There is very little evidence that they are pursuing the actual adjudicated criminals.
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SOBOROFF: And when I watched armed Border Patrol agents crush a father of three Marines because he was outside an IHOP, I think of that phrase, "Weakness masquerading as strength."
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June 24, 2025
WALLACE: DHS is in full -- what should we call it? -- pushback slash propaganda mode on this story -- called him an "illegal alien trying to evade law enforcement." They say that reports that he dislocated his shoulder are false. They say he swung weed whacker that he had been holding at an agent, but footage from several different angles seemed to undercut DHS's claim. They show Barranco was holding the weed whacker just running away from the agents while still holding the weed whacker because, as we said, he was at work weed whacking. He was pepper sprayed by one of the agents before even getting into any sort of physical altercation at all. So he already had impaired vision, and, as you can see on the video, was much smaller than one of the agents, and there were multiple. DHS has not responded to NBC's questions regarding the new videos.
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SOBOROFF: Did you tell your dad what the Department of Homeland Security is saying about him -- that he tried to assault them? I wonder if you guys talked about then what he said?
ALEJANDRO BARRANCO, SON OF ICE DETAINEE: I asked him. I said -- that was part of the things that I asked him -- I said, "Hey, they're trying to say that you hit them with a weed whacker." When he heard that, he like, he was shocked -- he was confused like, "What? When?" And I was like, "I'm not sure when they're saying." ... I see the video, but it's natural human movement -- natural human reaction. He gets pepper sprayed like seconds before that. He said he never intended to hurt anyone. He never intended to hit anyone, and it's just natural movement.
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June 26, 2025
WALLACE: The video of Narciso's arrest is shocking and deeply disturbing. While at work doing his job as a landscaper, he was beaten by ICE agents and shoved into an unmarked car. It shocked millions of Americans. Alejandro now tells NBC News that his dad has been transferred to Adelanto, a private prison in the desert outside of Los Angeles.
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Nine, 12, and 15 percent -- that's the number of Americans who support detaining people who have American-born children, who are married to U.S. citizens, or who have a job. He checks all those boxes.
