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New Scrutiny Over ICE's Targets And Tactics In Minneapolis; 5- Year-Old Boy Taken By ICE Held Held With Dad At TX Facility; Trump Davos Trip Marked By Frost With Canadian Prime Minster; Trump To Lead Board Of Peace, Retain Significant Control Of Its Actions; Potentially Historic Winter Storm To Batter Much Of The U.S. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired January 23, 2026 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:00:00]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: An image of a five-year-old boy hits a nerve and becomes a new symbol of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

This is the front of today's Minnesota Star Tribune. It captures the chaos of immigration enforcement and the response in Minneapolis, and the two photos that are intensifying scrutiny over their targets and tactics.

Below you see a man being sprayed in the face with pepper spray while being held by multiple federal agents. Above this image, five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who is now in an ICE facility in Texas with his father after being detained along with his father at their suburban home. Moments ago, ICE and border patrol officials said Liam's father ran away during the arrest, leaving his child in the car.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCOS CHARLES, ACTING EXEC ASSOCIATE DIR. ICE ENFORCEMENT AND REMOVAL OPERATIONS: Arias fled from law enforcement on foot, abandoning his child in the middle of winter in a vehicle. One of our officers stayed behind with that child, while other officers apprehended his father. After conducting the arrest, my officers stayed with the child. They cared for him, took him to get something to eat from a drive through restaurant, and spent hours ensuring he was taken care of. Again, my officers did that, not his father.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters today, including our own, Priscilla Alvarez. Priscilla, you've been doing a lot of reporting, obviously, broadly on what's going on in Minneapolis and elsewhere. But I just want to stay for one second specifically on this story, because, you know, there are times in events and in crises and in moments where there is an image that becomes kind of indelible and tells the story of what is going on, whether or not, it is tells the full story or not.

So, we're trying to piece together the full story of this. Tell us what we actually know so far.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think what's undisputed is that this photo captured the collateral of immigration enforcement operations. So, the department says the father was the target, but the father and the son were ultimately detained together, and now that child who was at his preschool earlier this week is at a facility in Texas.

Now, as you heard there from a senior ICE official, they described the situation as targeting the father, the father fleeing on foot. A situation where they also approached the door, the door of the home. We have heard from school officials, from the family's lawyer, that the mother was in the household, that she was being told not to open the door over fear that she too was going to be taken into custody.

So, we're still trying to piece together what happened frame by frame here, because certainly the photo shows that there was a moment in time where that child was surrounded by agents and there didn't appear to be in those moments another adult in the picture.

What's also undisputed, though, is that these, the father and the son are at this facility in Texas, a facility I've covered extensively, where they have outfitted it to be what they call a residential center. So, they have beige trailers where they have a library, a classroom, a gym, and family units are sent there. And that too shows, and my reporting indicates that this is not an isolated incident. It may be one that the cameras caught.

But in fact, over the last year, there have been many families who have been detained in the interior of the United States and held in these facilities. And the reason that's notable is because family detention has existed. In fact, it really started in earnest under the Obama administration, but typically it was for those families who were crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, they had first gotten here, they were getting processed, maybe released, maybe deported.

But in this case, you're plucking families out of their daily routines, the lives they fill here. And in this case, the attorney says they did everything right in terms of the legal process and then finding themselves in these facilities. And so that is the situation that is the case today, this morning.

BASH: Yeah. Did everything right, meaning, and I know you've been reporting on this. This is a family that came across the border during the Biden administration using what was the then current policy, which is to come across the border, say you're seeking asylum and then be released in the interior.

[12:05:00]

ALVAREZ: I just want to elaborate on that one point very quickly for viewers. That was a mobile application under the Biden administration where they a migrant made an appointment to go to a port of entry to get sort of the vetting and then be released into the United States. So, these -- this family, as far as we understand, it never illegally crossed the border -- BASH: And that's really key.

ALVAREZ: -- they went to a legal port of entry.

BASH: Right. The way that the Trump administration is handling the border is obviously very, very different. But at the time when they came across --

ALVAREZ: That was the case.

BASH: -- they were following the protocols of the current United States government. Can we just talk about this as a moment, and whether it is a moment, whether, you know, things are going to potentially change, whether things are changing already in terms of the psyche of this country.

ASMA KHALID, CO-HOST, THE GLOBAL STORY PODCAST, BBC: I mean, I think we've seen from the administration a bit of contrition. We saw that in terms of the president's comments in the White House press briefing room just this week when he spoke about the woman who was killed, you know, protesting ISIS involvement there in Minnesota. He said it was a horrible thing.

We've seen J.D. Vance, the Vice President, acknowledge some mistakes were made. I mean, again, there's not real sense of ownership maybe always over this, maybe sometimes it said in passive tense. But nonetheless, there seems to be a slight, ever so slight, change in rhetoric.

Now, the key question for me, though, is, you know, they have admitted mistakes in the past. That doesn't necessarily mean that leads to a change in policy. And I've been very closely covering the story of the young college student in Boston. I'm sure many viewers might remember this story.

Over Thanksgiving, she was flying home from Boston to Texas. She was picked up. She's been in Honduras. In her specific case, there was a technical procedural mistake. She was not supposed to be sent out of the country. The government admitted that mistake but hasn't actually done anything to reverse her deportation.

BASH: Let's just look at the numbers here, because they tell the story of how people feel and felt even before we saw the image of this little boy. The question of how ICE is handling its job overall. 63 percent say that they disapprove, 70 percent of independents, 79 percent of people under 30.

And Kristen, I get that the administration is trying to say that it is softening. You heard the president say that it is tragic that the woman was killed. He, in the next breath, also said that he understood that her father was a Trump supporter. So, I mean, it's sort of a, yeah, but -- but I do -- I do want to play one thing, because J.D. Vance went to Minneapolis yesterday, and he went with the intent, at least we were told of trying to do that softer.

But there were some differences between what he said yesterday and what he said when he came out to the press briefing room on January 7. Here's one prime example.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES: You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action, that's a federal issue. That guy is protected by absolute immunity.

No, I didn't say, and I don't think any other official within the Trump administration said that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity. That's absurd.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And then Kristen, just another example. The White House put on Twitter. Kristi Noem put a tweet of an image out there, which we're going to show you. And then the White House handle, if we can put it up, showed an altered post of that same issue -- that same image of the woman crying, which was not actually what happened. So, these are some examples of how they're trying to seize back the narrative but doing so with a little bit of gas lighting.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: They've lost the plot, and they think that the Americans have lost the plot. And so, what you see when you see President Trump out there doing his own briefing, which, by the way, he was not scheduled to do, is because President Trump thinks that he's the one who can actually deliver the message when it comes to immigration.

Sure, we are hearing some kind of softening of rhetoric going back on what they said. That is not changing the way that this administration is looking at ICE, they are still fully backing ICE. It is also not changing the way they are looking at immigration. Look at what President Trump did. Yes, he had a softer language when it came to the woman who was shot multiple times, causing outcry across the country.

But when it came to immigration, he held up those mug shots. He talked about what they were doing. He believes that his message isn't getting across. He also believes he won on immigration. He believes he is the strongest messenger, and that people, if they actually understand what ICE is doing, will be come back around to him.

But I do want to be very clear about something. They don't want these pictures out there. They don't want a picture of a five-year-old. They don't want somebody getting shot in the head. They don't want to change what they're doing. But they don't want that to be the narrative. They want the narrative to be, look at what we're doing for immigration.

[12:10:00]

BASH: Right. But -- sorry, what's happening is what we're capturing. And part of the argument that Greg Bovino made this morning is that they are not -- it is not the full story. I just wanted to listen to what he said about children that he said have been very much hurt by illegal immigrants, by track -- excuse me, trafficking them and by them being treated poorly by those who bring them over illegally. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GREGORY BOVINO, BORDER PATROL COMMANDER AT LARGE: How about the 14 that we recovered at that pot farm a few months ago in Camarillo, California? The 14 lost children traffic across the border that were found working illegally on a pot farm in California. Very little reporting from the Minneapolis news media here. I didn't really hear much, much from you guys.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I just want to say our Priscilla Alvarez is here. You've done a lot of reporting on the horrible conditions that many children have had to endure when they have been brought illegally, and what happens to some of them when they are here in the United States.

AARON BLAKE, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: I think it's a tough political angle that the administration is taking right now. We can talk about how J.D. Vance is coming out and talking about mistakes even Trump, earlier this week, he had the press conference where he said nice things about Renee Good. He said it was horrible, which is very different from what they said before. You know, before it was domestic terrorism. Now they're saying it was horrible. It's a very different tone.

But we don't see any shift in their tactics. And until you shift tactics, you're going to continue seeing these images of the five- year-old boy. You're going to continue seeing these images of the person on the ground being sprayed with that, that irritant, apparently. And that's -- there's no sign from the administration that they're actually shifting tactics. In fact, we're seeing this week a kind of doubling down on this idea that they can go into people's homes without a judicial warrant, which is a major step in favor of harsher, aggressive tactics.

And so, it's going to be really interesting to see if they are concerned about this, which seems to be what they're trying to get across. Are they actually going to change things up, or are they kind of committed to this so much and they're just going to try and blame local authorities for not helping them, or agitators for, you know, getting in the way, it's a difficult thing given where the American people are right now.

BASH: OK.

ALVAREZ: I think both things can be true, and the American public is seeing that too. You can be arresting people with criminal records and very serious convictions. But when you cast a wide net on the undocumented immigrants, and if you want to reach the mass deportation that the president campaigned on, you're going to have to include other people, and that is what the American public is consuming.

BASH: Very well said. Thank you so much. Don't go anywhere because, coming up. American allies are reeling after a wild week on President Trump's diplomatic roller coaster. Plus, FEMA is halting mass layoffs as it tries to prepare for the crippling storm that's expected to impact more than half the country. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: The great white north and the red, white and blue are experiencing some frost, and it's not coming from the winter weather. A cold war, at least, of words between President Trump and the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney kicked off in Davos and only keeps escalating.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK CARNEY, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: We live in an era of great power rivalry. That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Canada gets a lot of freebies from us. By the way, they should be grateful also, but they're not. They should be grateful to us. Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.

CARNEY: Canada doesn't live because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadian.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: President Trump couldn't let it go and is freezing the Canadian leader out of his newly formed Board of Peace on social media last night. The president rescinded Carney's invitation to join what he called the most prestigious board of leaders ever assembled.

My smart panel is back now. Kristen, our colleague, international editor and Andrew Roy, said this morning. I love the way he put it. He said, the president left Davos, and everybody in Europe is looking around saying, what just happened.

HOLMES: Yeah. And I was listening to someone on the radio this morning who is a European official, essentially saying that no one, none of these leaders in Europe and none of our allies really understand President Trump, even though they wish that they did, because they feel like it would be easier to navigate the current situation. But as you said, a lot of them are wondering what happened.

Now, I'm not sure if you just mentioned this, but Carney had argues that he didn't want to join Board of Peace. He already declined that invitation, as have a number of our European allies. But I will say, I mean, it does feel this time different when it comes to our European allies. The way that he went about Greenland, the way that he went about his remarks about NATO, seems to have alienated them and pushed them in a way we haven't seen before.

This actual as the Sylvania leader said, Europe showed that they have a backbone by not joining the Board of Peace, by walking away from President Trump after this kind of long speech, though, as you say, they didn't quite understand.

[12:20:00]

BASH: Yeah. I mean, just on the NATO front, we talked about this extensively when it was happening in real time this week. The fact that the president said repeatedly that NATO never contributes that NATO -- when the U.S. is in trouble, NATO wouldn't step in. First of all, that's the only time NATO had to step in to help a fellow NATO country was after 9/11. And second of all, in that war in Afghanistan, a lot of NATO countries had their young people lose their lives in going to war because the U.S. was attacked on its soil.

KHALID: And we've seen the British prime minister already really rebuff those comments. I mean, there certainly are Europeans taking a major issue with those -- with those remarks that the president made. I mean, look, I think that the big question to me is that we are one year into the president's second term, and a lot of people are looking around wondering, OK, well, what is the president's legacy? What is this new world order that he's creating?

And to me, the last week was perhaps one of the most edifying, and I know I use that where people like what happened. But it was, I think, really edifying and understanding what Trump wants.

BASH: Is it?

KHALID: It is, I think to some degree. When you saw him have the Board of Peace, it's a concentration of power. And I think what I was -- what I'm saying is we created the United States right after World War II, helped create the new world order, which was the United Nations. And now President Trump is saying, no, no, no, I don't want that new world order. I want the Board of Peace, which is largely being created. If you look at through what --

BASH: So, let's put it out. Let's put it up, because now I'm picking up putting down.

KHALID: It is a new world order. I mean, this is -- and I think it's being, I mean, long story short, the Board of Peace for viewers who might not know. It was, to some degree, actually approved of by the United Nations in November, of course, with that limited vision that it was going to actually be focused on reconstruction in Gaza.

BASH: Right.

KHALID: What it has now become, many would argue, and in fact, we did an episode of this on podcast today. It is, you know, the European experts are looking at this and saying, well, no, this is actually being created as somewhat of a counter institution to the United Nations to help resolve conflicts with a concentration of power all around President Trump.

And to me, that's really instructive and understanding how the president views the world in this moment. What's also worth pointing out, though, is among some of the nations that did not join was China. China didn't join. China doesn't want to be a part of it, and China sees itself as being sort of the great other power in this moment.

The one other thing I will say about this week, though, that I think is really interesting is that, here you have President Trump saying, this is how I see the world. The Board of Peace. You had some strong words from, you know, the prime minister of Canada. Notably, he actually didn't mention President Trump by name. One stone those remarks. And he talked about middle powers getting together and creating some sort of counter ballots. But what's that actually look like?

BASH: Yeah. Well, I just want to go back to the Board of Peace for a minute, because it's one of the most Trumpian documents I think we've ever seen, and that says something, because we've seen a lot of them. Donald J. Trump shall serve as inaugural chairman of the Board of Peace. Executive board will be selected by the chairman. Subject people will be subject to removal by the chairman, veto by the chairman, additional times the chairman may determine, and it goes on and on and on.

BLAKE: Yeah. I don't think Mark Carney is very sad about this. I mean, we talked about how he'd already kind of said no before they withdrew the invitation. And if you look at the list of countries who are saying yes to this, it is not a list that is heavy on Western Europe --

BASH: But the fact that Trump is putting himself in charge of everything.

BLAKE: I mean, and that's --

BASH: -- and every -- the others agreed to it.

BLAKE: You think about what you're signing up for if you join that. You know, you're not just forking over possibly $1 billion to kind of what seems like a slush fund that can be used for whatever purposes. You know, Trump is in charge of this in perpetuity. Do you want to deal with Trump after he's out of the White House?

BASH: And that's another really important thing. It's not just while he's president.

BLAKE: Exactly. It's afterwards. And so, you know, this is -- this is very much another example of Trump using his position of power right now to do something that is going to give him more power in the future, to really convince these companies -- these countries to get on board with this thing that can allow him to kind of have a seat at the table in the future after his presidency is over. But it's just a bargain that is rubbing a lot of allies the wrong way, just like many of his other actions.

BASH: All right. Up next half of the country is facing potentially historic winter storm. More than a dozen states are issuing dire warnings. The forecast and new reporting on FEMA abruptly halting disaster response dismissals, after a quick break. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Right now, one of the most extreme winter storms in years is beginning its trek from Texas to the northeast. The dire warnings from forecasters and officials across 14 states include phrases like catastrophic ice accumulation, biggest snowfall since Snowmageddon, life threatening cold.

CNN's Allison Chinchar and Gabe Cohen join us to follow the forecast and the disaster response prep. Allison, let me start with you. What's the latest projection?

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Right. So, we take a look at some of these numbers because they are -- they are very impressive. In some areas, they haven't seen this in years. You look at this is just snowfall totals alone, and you can see a wide swath of that pink color indicating at least eight inches of snow. But some areas could pick up well in excess of a foot of snow by the time this is all said and done.

Now perhaps the more impactful is going to be the ice accumulation. And you have some of these areas that are looking at half an inch to as much as an inch of ice. Keep in mind, the weight of the ice alone, especially when it accumulates on things like trees and power lines, becomes too heavy, so those things come down.

And this in turn could end up causing some pretty widespread power outages for some of these cities and communities around them as we go through the rest of the weekend. And because of that, you also have a lot of these winter storm impacts, obviously, yes, power outages, but also travel on the roadways