With the brutal actions of ICE agents, Donald Trump and his administration’s deportations have been in the headlines for some time now.
However, an episode of 60 Minutes on the subject of the deportations that was suddenly pulled from the schedule a month ago finally aired on Sunday. This move had triggered an internal battle on political pressure that finally came into the open.
Meanwhile, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi made no reference to her dispute with the CBS News editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss on the story of deportees being sent to El Salvador’s notoriously harsh CECOT prison.
When the episode in question was originally struck from the December 21 episode on Weiss’s orders, Alfonsi told her 60 Minutes colleagues that it wasn’t an editorial decision, it was a “political one.”
Meanwhile, Weiss argued that the story didn’t truly reflect the Trump administration’s viewpoint or advance reporting that was done by other news organizations before.
The 60 Minutes show on Sunday did not include on-camera interviews with Trump administration officials. However, it did feature statements from the White House and Department of Homeland Security that were not included by Alfonsi before her story was pulled. Meanwhile, some of the statements in the episode, which were included in full on the 60 Minutes website were dated prior to December 21.
“Since November, 60 Minutes has made several attempts to interview key Trump administration officials on camera about our story,” Alfonsi said. “They declined our requests.”
When the Associated Press tried to contact Alfonsi on Sunday, she didn’t immediately respond. However, in her email, Alfonsi said the Trump administration’s refusal to consent to on-camera interviews had been a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.
However, CBS News said it was always going to air the episode. In a statement, it said on Sunday that its “leadership has always been committed to airing the 60 Minutes CECOT piece as soon as it was ready. Tonight, viewers get to see it, along with other important stories, all of which speak to CBS News’ independence and the power of our storytelling.”
Moreover, Alfonsi’s story was the second of three subjects on Sunday’s 60 Minutes, with the lead story being on Cecilia Vega’s report from Minneapolis on ICE enforcement efforts and the ongoing protests.
When the original decision to drop Alfonsi’s CECOT story was blasted by critics, saying the appointment of Weiss, founder of the Free Press website had no previous experience in TV news. Moreover, it represented an attempt by the network’s new corporate leadership to curry favor with Donald Trump.
However, while the episode was pulled from broadcast in December, the original episode mistakenly became available online. As reported, CBS News had fed a version of the show to Global Television, the network that airs 60 Minutes in Canada. Global Television then posted the episode on its website prior to the last-minute switch removing the story.
This allowed viewers to see with their own eyes what Weiss had rejected, giving them the opportunity to compare it to what 60 Minutes did eventually put out on the air. However, the body of the story was unchanged and included a short clip of Trump stating that the prison operators “don’t play games,” along with a clip from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, saying that “heinous monsters, rapists, murderers, sexual assaulters, predators who have no right to be in this country” were sent to CECOT.
There was systematic “torture and other abuses” at CECOT, and nearly half of the Venezuelans the U.S. sent there “had no criminal history,” according to the nonprofit Human Rights Watch, citing ICE data. https://t.co/OQBRkFbVLO pic.twitter.com/VK4jXp6Ko4
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) January 19, 2026
However, the introduction by Alfonsi was updated to include the January 3 US raid on Venezuela that led to the capture of President Nicolas Maduro, who is currently in US custody. Meanwhile, she did change the end of the of her story to include comment from the Trump administration, which featured the administration comment, along with an explanation for not providing detailed records on the migrants sent to El Salvador.
Moreover, the Trump administration had also provided images of tattoos worn by the two migrants interviewed by Alfonsi, which included on swastika, that the migrant said he had gotten as a teenager without knowing what it meant.
Since Weiss’s appointment on 60 Minutes, administration officials have featured more on CBS news, including in interviews that she occasionally helped to arrange. Moreover, President Trump himself was interviewed by Norah O’Donnell on 60 minutes on November 2, 2025.
According to the New York Times on Saturday, following Trump’s interview last week by new CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, Leavitt told the network “we’ll sue your ass off” if the exchange wasn’t aired in full.
Tuesday saw the full 13-minute interview broadcast, which is unusual for one of the network’s evening newscasts, a half-hour summary of the day’s big stories. Reportedly, CBS told The Times it had chosen to go ahead and air the interview unedited at the time it was booked.
Donald Trump is known for his objections to how his interviews are edited, including the release of an unedited transcript of an interview conducted by Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes back in 2020.
