A top official at the Department of Homeland Security has been caught posting inaccurate information about the violent arrest of an American teen girl.
Last month, the Daily Beast exposed how Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin—the most senior communications official to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—had falsely smeared a mom who lost her baby while locked up by ICE as a wanted killer.
This time McLaughlin has been caught claiming that footage of a teenage girl being violently detained on Friday was year-old video of Chicago Police Department detaining a burglar.
The terrified U.S. citizen was, in fact, detained on Friday in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates, which is not in the jurisdiction of the Chicago PD.
The officer, who swung the girl onto the floor before kneeling on her, was wearing a DHS Enforcement and Removals Operations (ERO) flak jacket.
After the video of the horrifying altercation was posted on social media, McLaughlin reposted it, writing, “Imagine being so desperate to demonize law enforcement you post a video from a burglary arrest Chicago Police made over a year ago. This isn’t even ICE.”
However, within hours, McLaughlin’s latest attempt to misinform the public had completely unraveled.
Firstly, an analysis of the video by the Daily Beast revealed that it featured a Hoffman Estates Police car.
Analysis of separate videos posted to social media appear to show the same officer leading the girl out of the Hoffman Estates Police Department later on. The man is wearing the same distinctive blue hoodie, sneakers, body armor, and leg strap holster. He places her into an unmarked dark blue Ford Expedition that looks the same as the one in the viral arrest video.
Hoffman Estates is a village in Cook County, Illinois. While it is a suburb of Chicago, it has its own police force outside the jurisdiction of the Chicago Police Department, which was not involved in the arrest as McLaughlin claimed.
McLaughlin’s version of events was further undermined when the parents of the 18-year-old girl, a U.S. citizen named Evelyn, gave an interview on Monday to CBS News.
Evelyn’s devastated mom and dad, Jazmin and Gerardo, confirmed that they had waited while their daughter and her two friends were held for hours in the parking lot of the Hoffman Estates Police Department, with no explanation.
While McLaughlin also claimed the footage of the officers “isn’t even ICE,” videos show the officer wearing body armor with “ERO—Enforcement and Removal Operations” branding on it.
Enforcement and Removal Operations is a division of ICE. Its website says it “manages all aspects of the immigration enforcement process, including the identification, arrest, detention and removal of aliens who are subject to removal or are unlawfully present in the U.S.”
A statement from Hoffman Estates Police department confirmed ICE had been in the area.
“The Hoffman Estates Police Department follows the Trust Act and does not participate in immigration enforcement with ICE. On Friday we had a squad car in the area that was responding to a separate call for service.
“The only interaction we had with ICE was when they came to the police department to file a police report [in] reference [to] an incident that occurred during their enforcement. They ultimately decided to complete the report this week with us and have not completed that yet.”
McLaughlin’s X post remains up on her official government account despite evidence that it is not accurate.
The Daily Beast twice asked McLaughlin, whose role is to act as a mouthpiece for DHS and Noem on social media and on TV, why she had made the false claims about the incident and, now that it has been proven to be false, why she had not taken down the post.
McLaughlin did not respond, despite having responded to other inquiries on Monday made by the Daily Beast. On Wednesday, she told the Beast: “We stand by our statements and the facts.”
The Department of Homeland Security under Noem, nicknamed ICE Barbie for her love of getting dressed up in military garb while participating in raids, is facing scrutiny for some of its more extreme tactics as it struggles to meet President Donald Trump’s target of 3,000 daily deportations.
But it’s not just DHS. The Daily Beast revealed last week that the White House had used footage of ICE raids in Florida, to show the “chaos” in Chicago as it sought to defend sending in the National Guard.
Evelyn’s parents told CBS that their daughter and her friends were shaken by the incident. “They were telling them they were U.S. citizens, and they didn’t care. It was very scary to see,” Jazmin said. “I couldn’t protect my child,” Gerardo added.
The family is now planning legal action. “Isn’t the government supposed to protect and serve?” Gerardo said.
