CBS News has now published the entirety of a 60 Minutes interview with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) General Counsel James Percival after they omitted several key exchanges that took place during the conversation. Percival sat down with 60 Minutes contributor Gianna Toboni to do a segment for the program titled, “Destination: Nowhere,” which aired on October 25, 2026, and examined the administration’s third-country deportation policy.
Percival revealed later that the interview was nearly an hour long; however, only a portion of it aired on television. The show then published a video of the full interview on its official YouTube channel. DHS slammed the program’s editing and made the case that the omitted exchanges provided additional context concerning the Trump administration’s policies.
In a clip that was shared by Percival on social media platform X, he asked Toboni if deportees faced any kind of persecution or torture once they were returned to their countries of origin. “Are you suggesting that when these people went back to their home countries that they were persecuted or tortured?” Percival asked the host.
Toboni answered that she was making a reference to a U.S. federal judge’s court ruling, which then led to Percival asking if the judge had suggested that the deportees were “persecuted and tortured when they went back to their home country.” She then replied that deportees were “more than likely to be tortured or persecuted” if they returned home, going on to say that “some have faced violence,” but clarified that was not her claim, according to The Daily Caller.
Percival then said that Toboni’s position implied that Ghana “is not accurately adjudicating” deportees’ fears of persecution. He explained that if Ghana were indeed making those kind of errors, “you would expect those people to return to their home country and then face persecution or torture because Ghana would be getting it wrong.”
The general counsel then suggested that the lack of reported persecution or torture among immigrants being sent back home could be an indication that Ghana’s “procedures are adequate.” Percival then explained that the “ultimate question is are they actually sending someone somewhere where they’re going to be persecuted or tortured, and it doesn’t sound like you are making that claim.”
Lauren Bis, a spokeswoman for the White House who was asked about the extended version of the interview, slammed 60 Minutes for engaging in selective editing, going on to tell the Daily Caller that the show “failed to include key information about how third country removals are essential to the safety of the American people.”
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“These removals allow us to remove some of the most barbaric criminals, including child rapists and murderers whose home countries refuse to take them back,” Bis continued. “Thanks to these removals, America is no longer a safe haven for the world’s criminals.” She then accused the show of refusing to provide coverage for victims of illegal alien crime, while choosing to “peddle false sob stories of illegal aliens.”
Percival posted another clip of the interview on social media, which included a part of the conversation that focused on the criminal records of deportees and if immigration enforcement should keep its focus primarily on those accused or convicted of committing violent offenses. Toboni went on to answer that challenge by saying “murder and rape” were the two crimes she already heard Percival and the Trump administration place a heavy emphasis on.
She then cited an “internal DHS document” saying that during President Donald Trump’s first year as president, “0.5 percent were accused or convicted of homicide, 1.4 percent were accused or convicted of sexual assault. I mean, together that’s 2 percent.” Percival offered significant pushback to Toboni’s claim and pointed out that it’s a good thing to get the individuals responsible for those crimes out of the country.
“Isn’t it wonderful that we are getting those people out of the country, should that be the limit of who has to follow the law? Just rapists and murderers have to follow the law?” he responded. Toboni then pressed him about the remaining 98%, asking, “What about everybody else?” He replied, “Number one, everyone has to follow the law; it is not an excuse to say I’m not going to follow the law just because I haven’t raped or killed anybody.”
He then said he wants “anyone who could commit a crime who is not supposed to be in this country, to be out of this country because every illegal alien crime is a preventable crime.” Percival then pointed to immigration laws passed by Congress and enforced by DHS, stating that some of the removals involve “following an order from an immigration judge.”
A conversation with @60Minutes on rapists and murderers, which they declined to include. pic.twitter.com/XjUs7uDzj3
— James Percival (@DHSGenCounsel) October 27, 2026
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video