Margaret Brennan Goes Hard At Trump Official Over Deportation Flights In Crackling Exchange: ‘No One Is Defending Gangs’

Trump National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and CBS’s Margaret Brennan clashed over the White House flying alleged illegal immigrant gang members to Central America on Sunday.

The anchor exclaimed critics of the Trump administration’s deportation policies were not “defending gangs.” Waltz’s position was that the Trump White House had a duty to deport illegal migrants and critics of that came off as sympathetic to criminals.

The spirited exchange came amid a back and forth over President Donald Trump’s use of the obscure Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to round up alleged members of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua to deport them to El Salvador.

On Sunday’s edition of Face the Nation, Brennan noted the invocation of the act for the deportation flights had been challenged in court and halted.

She also noted one man aboard a flight that left for El Salvador earlier this month appeared not to be a member of the gang, and one of those flown to a maximum security prison was a woman.

“How does that kind of high-consequence mistake happen?” Brennan asked. “So there was a mistake that you acknowledge here?”

Waltz said the position of the White House was that mistakes might happen but that, in the end, those deported were all in the country illegally.

He also said Trump had every right to invoke the Alien Enemies Act and claimed some migrants had been sent to the US directly by foreign governments.

“Margaret, we have instances where the IRGC from Iran have operated with and through Mexican cartels to then bomb facilities here in the United States,” Waltz said. “We’ve taken decisive action in that regard. We’re going to take decisive action in this regard, and we’re making a Washington D.C. distinction.”

Waltz then declared Americans were “tired of being terrorized by these gangs,” evoking a strong response from Brennan.

She said, “No one is defending gangs!”

Waltz responded, “Well, but it sounds like it. It certainly sounds like it from the Democrats on the other side.”

Brennan concluded the chief concern among Trump’s critics is the deportations are “being carried out in a sloppy way.”

Watch above via CBS News.