U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem attends a House Homeland Security hearing entitled "Worldwide Threats to the Homeland," on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S. December 11, 2025. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
MS NOW host Katy Tur took a former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) advisor to task for calling out the wrong people jumping to conclusions after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot someone in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Wednesday.
“I have to just push back a little bit in terms a little bit of the coverage so far for people to speculate as to motive as to circumstances just from watching a video? That's kind of reckless because they're speculating on motive,” said former New York state ICE advisor Michael Balboni, who is a Republican. “You can't speculate on motive.”
Hours after dressing up as an ICE agent and joining agents in Minneapolis streets, video emerged of an ICE agent shooting into a woman’s vehicle, killing the occupant amid shouts of fury from onlookers.
“But who’s speculating on motive here?” Tur asked Balboni, which prompted Balboni to cite the quote of a local elected official who appeared earlier on her show.
“I completely agree with her in terms of a peaceful protest. But to sit there and say that the ICE agents appear to be rogue, well, thanks for that perspective. But you're not there. You're not an investigator. You haven't had any more information than anybody else out there. So, it's incredibly speculative at a time when someone lost their lives.”
“It appears that DHS has already gotten to the bottom of it,” Tur responded. “They released a statement saying the woman was engaged — or Kristi Noem says — she was engaged in an act of terrorism. The statement from DHS said she was trying to ram and kill agents, and that the use of force was justified. So, in terms of jumping to conclusions about what happened, DHS has already done that.”
“Here's the one thing I know from all the experiences I've had: the first reports out of any scene are wrong. It's just a first report,” Balboni said.
“That’s not a report. That’s a statement from the federal government,” Tur countered. “And in past administrations, statements like that do not come that quickly. There was a ‘we are investigating what's happened’ and it's vague and ‘we will get back to you.’ That was definitive.”
“What I was referring to is that perhaps the secretary was basing her statement on information that she got immediately from the scene,” Balboni conceded. “And that's always problematic in my experience, because you don't know all the information you need time to observe, understand, digest, evaluate, and you need time to do that.”
Watch the segment below:
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