DHS General Counsel James Percival released uncut portions of a 60 Minutes interview this week after the network aired a segment that portrayed the deportation of a Houston-area man as an act of heartlessness.
The omitted material included details from the man’s asylum file and Percival’s responses about the scope of criminal activity among people in the country illegally.
As RedState previously reported, the 60 Minutes piece focused on Moussa Diawara, a 57-year-old man from Mali who overstayed his tourist visa and had lived in the Houston area for more than 25 years.
Diawara married a U.S. citizen, had two children, and worked as an Uber driver. In 2012, an immigration judge granted him withholding of removal to Mali. His persecution concerns, according to the program, revolved around his conversion to Christianity, with Mali being a Muslim-majority nation.
In July, ICE placed him on a flight to Ghana, which provided diplomatic assurances. Ghanaian authorities later sent him to Mali anyway.
“It feels really empty without him,” says 16-year-old Corey Diawara, whose father was deported in July.
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 25, 2026
His father had lived in the U.S. for 25 years and had no criminal record. Moussa Diawara says he was deported without being able to speak to his lawyer or a judge. He was… pic.twitter.com/gx0ayj1mBs
After reviewing Diawara’s file, Percival posted that the asylum application listed a different basis for the fear claim. Diawara wrote that he was gay, and said he would face persecution in Mali on that ground. He is married to a woman and has two children.
“This illegal alien is [60 Minutes’] poster child for what it claims are wrongful deportations,” Percival wrote. “His claimed reason for fearing Mali was that he is ‘gay,’ just in case you’re wondering how bad the immigration fraud problem is.”
Separately, Percival posted clips from the interview that did not appear in the broadcast.
In one exchange, a correspondent cited figures showing that less than 14 percent of recent ICE detainees had violent criminal records. Percival responded that the label is misleading because many serious offenses — possession of child sexual abuse material and trafficking in heroin, among others — are not classified as violent crimes.
DHS General Counsel James Percival SHUTS DOWN 60 Minutes for trying to claim the Trump admin isn’t deporting the worst of the worst: 60 Minutes: “Less than 14% of people detained by ICE had a violent criminal record.” Percival: “It’s an incredibly misleading label. There are many horrible, HORRIBLE crimes that people do not classify as violent crimes. Let me give you some examples. Child pornography […] watching it is not considered a violent crime. Trafficking in heroin, not considered a violent crime. So anytime someone feeds you a violent crime stat like that, they are absolutely COOKING THE BOOKS to erase the significant criminality and public safety threat.” https://t.co/hTBOaZWIGM
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 27, 2026
Embedded tweet continues:
... many horrible, HORRIBLE crimes that people do not classify as violent crimes. Let me give you some examples. Child pornography […] watching it is not considered a violent crime. Trafficking in heroin, not considered a violent crime. So anytime someone feeds you a violent crime stat like that, they are absolutely COOKING THE BOOKS to erase the significant criminality and public safety threat.”
Percival argued that any crime committed by someone present illegally is preventable and that earlier administrations had not removed such individuals at vaguely comparable rates.
I reiterate — ALL illegal aliens are bad actors. Breaching a nation's sovereign borders is often a gateway to other crimes.
In another portion of the interview, the DHS General Counsel pressed the correspondent on whether people who commit only lesser offenses should still face removal.
CBS News national correspondent Gianna Toboni thought she had it framed perfectly, too. She had the numbers in front of her, and she had already written the narrative that only a fraction of those being removed were, in fact, the worst of the worst.
Until it all imploded.
"Based on the internal DHS document, in [President] Trump's first year, 0.5 percent of those detained were accused or convicted of homicide," she said, presumably satisfied that she had made a point. "1.4 percent were accused or convicted of sexual assault. I mean, together that's 2 percent."
According to the document obtained by CBS News, ICE made roughly 393,000 arrests between January 21, 2025, and January 31, 2026 — President Trump’s first year back in office. 1.9 percent of that number means roughly 7,500 illegal aliens detained fall into either the murderer or rapist column.
7,500 violent criminals, gone.
But because Toboni converted it to a percentage, she and her cohorts at 60 Minutes think that's no big deal. How perfectly obtuse.
"Isn't it wonderful that we're getting those people out of the country?" Percival countered.
Yes. The simple, and only appropriate, response to that question is yes.
Toboni replied, "100 percent," but was armed with a "but" to add to the argument. Percival wasn't having it.
"Should that be the limit of who has to follow the law?" he asked. "Just rapists and murderers have to follow the law?"
"Just rapists and murderers have to follow the law?" 60 Minutes conveniently left this conversation with DHS General Counsel James Percival out of their segment on deportations https://t.co/wd6r3tBDdk
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 27, 2026
60 Minutes has since posted an extended version of the interview online.
The network’s aired segment acknowledged that the United States had a right to deport Diawara but not directly to Mali, which they didn't, and it included a DHS statement questioning the credibility of his claims. Just not the details.
The full context of the asylum application and the broader discussion of non-violent criminality did not appear in the broadcast version.
Percival, in another clip, also defended the practice of sending illegals to third-party countries as a necessary national security measure to remove criminals when their home countries refuse to accept them.
"You can kind of see why [60 Minutes] left stuff like this on the cutting room floor," he wrote.
You can kind of see why @60Minutes left stuff like this on the cutting room floor. https://t.co/w5L4jEbdJl
— James Percival (@DHSGenCounsel) October 27, 2026
Hey, when you've got a narrative to push — that all illegals being deported are just harmless 'Houston or Maryland Men' and that authorities should turn a blind eye to fraud and other "lesser" crimes, then yeah, it's easy to see why 60 Minutes selectively edited the interview the way they did.
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