Vice President JD Vance used a CBS News town hall in Michigan to defend Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers while saying the administration has a responsibility to investigate and prosecute those who do wrong.
"Most of them are amazing people who are patriots," Vance told CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, adding that "we have a responsibility to prosecute, investigate when people do screw up." This account relies on reports from CBS News and the Washington Examiner about the Oct. 16 taping, not on the full interview itself, which has not yet aired. The Examiner links to a CBS News post on X.
The remarks matter because CBS says ICE and Customs and Border Protection have faced criticism over use of force since the immigration crackdown ramped up.
What Vance Said
The one-hour special, titled "Things That Matter: A Town Hall With Vice President JD Vance," was held in Michigan, where Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed are in a closely watched Senate race. CBS News reported that Vance compared law enforcement officers generally with ICE officers.
Dokoupil noted that people talk about officers before they are investigated, and asked about ICE's biggest mistakes. Vance declined to single out incidents. He said, "There are a number of cases where we've investigated and either provided further training, or sometimes even provided disciplinary situations within ICE." He added: "We don't always advertise that stuff."
Vance gave no specific cases, names, numbers or dates of discipline, so his claim that ICE has investigated and disciplined officers cannot be verified from the excerpts.
The Cases Behind the Question
CBS described the incidents surrounding the conversation. Earlier this year, two Americans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were shot and killed by immigration authorities during protests in Minnesota. No criminal charges have been filed in either case. The Justice Department has opened an investigation into Pretti's shooting.
The officer who shot Good was placed on administrative leave. In May, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul questioned whether he had been reassigned to New York, and the Department of Homeland Security declined to say where he was working.
CBS also listed other incidents. An ICE officer fatally shot a 25-year-old Colombian man in his car in Maine; CBS's article gives two different months for that shooting, so the date is unclear. In September, an immigration officer shot a Venezuelan man in the back in Austin, Texas. Earlier in October, ICE agents shot a man from the Dominican Republic in the neck during an arrest attempt in New York, with a 5-year-old boy in the back seat. An ICE vehicle also hit and injured a man near Houston. These details are CBS's characterizations and have not been independently verified.
How the Coverage Differed
The Washington Examiner described the session as a pretaped interview and headlined it around the need to prosecute officers who "screw up," which is the paper's own framing. CBS adds the word "investigate" to the same quoted sentence. The Examiner's report omits Dokoupil's follow-up and the incident context that CBS included.
The exact wording of Vance's remarks should be checked against the full transcript once it is available.
What Comes Next
The full town hall airs Saturday, Oct. 17, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS and Paramount+, and will later be posted on CBSNews.com, YouTube and CBS News 24/7. It may include more from Vance on immigration and ICE. Still to come are any response from DHS or ICE, Democratic reaction, and developments in the Justice Department's investigation into the Pretti shooting.
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