WATCH: NBC’s Peter Alexander and Trump WH Spox Leavitt Have Testy Confrontation On Mass Deportations And Trump’s Spending Freeze

Peter Alexander, NBC News’s chief White House correspondent sparred with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday over President Donald Trump’s mass deportation program and his sweeping freeze of federal grants, which took many in the country by surprise on Monday night as it was not initially clear which programs would be impacted.

“Very quickly, just following up on the question on immigration, first, President Trump during the course of the campaign in 2024 said the following about illegal immigration. He said, ‘They’re going back home where they belong. And we start with the criminals. There are many, many criminals.’ NBC News has learned that ICE arrested 1,179 undocumented immigrants on Sunday and nearly half of them 566 of the migrants appear to have no prior criminal record,” Alexander began, adding:

And besides, entering the country illegally, is the president still focused exclusively, which is a civil crime, not a it’s not criminal.

“It’s a federal crime,” Leavitt interjected as the two began a quick, but civil sparring session.

Below is the full transcript of the rest of their exchange:

PETER ALEXANDER: So I’m asking, though he said he was going to focus on those violent offenders first. So is violent offenders no longer the predicate for these people to be deported?

KAROLINE LEAVITT: The president has said countless times on the campaign trail – I’ve been with him at the rallies, I know you’ve been there covering them too, Peter, that he is focused on launching the largest mass deportation operation in American history of illegal criminals. And if you are an individual, a foreign national, who illegally enters the United States of America, you are, by definition, a criminal. And so therefore you are subject to deportation.

PETER ALEXANDER: I apologize for interrupting. So to be clear, violent criminals do not receive precedence in terms of the deportations taking place.

KAROLINE LEAVITT: The president has also said two things can be true at the same time. We want to deport illegal criminals, illegal immigrants from this country. But the president has said that of course, the illegal criminal drug dealers, the rapists, the murderers, the individuals who have committed heinous acts on the interior of our country and who have terrorized law abiding American citizens, absolutely. Those should be the priority of ICE. But that doesn’t mean that the other illegal criminals who entered our nation’s borders are off the table.

PETER ALEXANDER. Understood. Then let me ask you a separate question about the confusion that still exists across the country right now as it relates to the freeze, or the pause as it’s described. President Trump, of course, ran, one of the key policy items was that he was going to lower prices, lower the cost of everything from groceries as he often said.

But in many of the cases it would seem that some of these moves could raise prices for real Americans on everything from low-income heating, that program, childcare programs. Will nothing that the president is doing here in terms of the freeze in these programs, raise prices on ordinary Americans?

KAROLINE LEAVITT: What particular actions are you referring to that would do that?

PETER ALEXANDER: I’m referring LIHEAP right now, that’s the low-income heating program, for example, we can talk about…there’s no clarity. So I could refer to a lot of them. We don’t know what they are specifically. Can you tell us that LIHEAP, that LIHEAP, is not one of those affected?

KAROLINE LEAVITT: So you’re asking a hypothetical based on programs that you can’t even identify?

PETER ALEXANDER: I just identified one. Just to be clear, since you guys haven’t identified them, let’s do it together just for Americans at home. Medicaid. Is that affected?

KAROLINE LEAVITT: I gave you a list of examples. Social Security, Medicare, welfare benefits…

PETER ALEXANDER: Medicaid?

KAROLINE LEAVITT: …food stamps, that will not be impacted by this federal pause. I can get you the full list after this briefing from the office of management and budget. But I do want to address the cost cutting, because that’s certainly very important and cutting the cost of living in this country. President Trump has taken historic action over the past week to do that. He actually signed a memorandum to deliver emergency price relief for American families, which took a number of actions. I can walk you through those. He also repealed many onerous Biden administration regulations.

We know over the past four years, American households have been essentially taxed $55,000 in regulations from the previous administration. President Trump, with the swipe of his pen, rescinded those which will ultimately put more money back in the pockets of the American people. So deregulation is a big deal. And then when it comes to energy, I mean, the president signed an executive order to declare a national energy emergency here at home, which is going to make America energy dominant.

We know that energy is one of the number one drivers of inflation. And so that’s why the president wants to increase our energy supply to bring down costs for Americans. The trump energy boom is incoming and Americans can expect that.

Watch the clip above via Fox News.