During a The Situation Room segment in response to Tuesday’s live broadcast of a Homeland Security Committee oversight hearing, CNN blatantly twisted ICE Director Todd Lyons’s statements about violence against agents and described the people he was talking about as, simply, “people who don’t like ICE.” CNN televised the opening statements of immigration enforcement agencies, including Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott and Lyons. As part of his opening statement, Lyons called out the increasing violence against ICE agents and took a defiant stand against their efforts to harm and intimidate them: We are facing the deadliest operating environment in our agency's history. In fiscal year 2025, death threats against ICE personnel increased more than 8,000 percent. Assaults on officers have skyrocketed over 1400 percent. One officer in Minnesota had his finger bitten off by a protester, egged on by elected officials characterizing our officers as gestapo or secret police. The families of ICE personnel have been made to feel unsafe in their homes. I know this first hand because my own family was targeted. but let me send a message to anyone who thinks they can intimidate us. You will fail. Despite these perils, our officers continue to execute their mission with unwavering resolve, and we are only getting started.     In the analysis segment following statements, CNN chief domestic correspondent Phil Mattingly presented Lyons’s statement about “resolve” without any content of the violence faced by officers, instead framing it as resolve against general criticism: Lyons making very clear that his team at ICE has “unwavering resolve.” “We are just getting started”, he said in his opening statement. So the idea that there was going to be some type of pullback or effort to kind of almost be a little bit more pragmatic about how they operate, given the Democratic objections. They're making very clear from the start, Wolf, that's just not going to be the case.” Anchor Wolf Blitzer then construed Lyons’s statement as being directed towards people who simply, "don't like ICE.” “And he said that those people who don't like ICE, the organization he heads, he said ‘they can intimidate us, but you will fail,’ his words. You will fail if you try to do that,” Blitzer suggested. Mattingly, with no mention of increasing violence against ICE, used the statement to present a potential prospect of a continuance of immigration operations: The, kind of, passage of time has allowed them to take a position or plan to have a posture during this hearing with their officials that is a combination of defiance and making very clear that this was what the president ran on, what he was elected for and what they plan on continuing in the months ahead. CNN’s twisting of Lyons’s startling information of high increases in violence against ICE agents was a bit brazen since they literally carried his statement live where he shared violence statistics. Also, Blitzer’s description of the people Lyons directed his “You will fail” comments grossly simplified and minimized the situation. Liberal media outlets, like CNN, blatant twisting of information the viewers just witnessed with their own eyes was the permanent basis for the low trust in news we see today. The transcript is below. Click to expand: CNN’s The Situation Room February 10, 2026 10:40:50 AM Eastern (…) ICE DIRECTOR TODD LYONS (Congressional Hearing Testimony): In the wake of the unprecedented border crisis of the previous administration, ICE has stepped into the breach to enforce the law. This commitment has a cost. We are facing the deadliest operating environment in our agency's history. In fiscal year 2025, death threats against ICE personnel increased more than 8,000 percent. Assaults on officers have skyrocketed over 1,400 percent. One officer in Minnesota had his finger bitten off by a protester, egged on by elected officials characterizing our officers as “gestapo” or “secret police.” The families of ICE personnel have been made to feel unsafe in their homes. I know this first hand because my own family was targeted. But let me send a message to anyone who thinks they can intimidate us, you will fail. Despite these perils, our officers continue to execute their mission with unwavering resolve, and we are only getting started.  (...) 10:49:21 AM Eastern PHIL MATTINGLY: And what we just heard from Todd Lyons really kind of underscores this point. Well, there may be a rhetorical shift, and they may have been willing to have negotiations over DHS funding on the hill, which is obviously the backdrop of everything that's going on. Lyons making very clear that his team at ICE has “unwavering resolve.” “We are just getting started”, he said in his opening statement. So the idea that there was going to be some type of pullback or effort to kind of almost be a little bit more pragmatic about how they operate, given the Democratic objections. They're making very clear from the start, Wolf, that's just not going to be the case. WOLF BLITZER: And he said that those people who don't like ICE, the organization he heads, he said “they can intimidate us, but you will fail”, his words. You will fail if you try to do that. MATTINGLY: Yeah. There's a level of defiance to the statement which is, I think, always been the underlying case. When you talk to administration officials throughout the course of the last couple of weeks. And I think there is a view inside the administration that for all of the ways they were on their back feet - of their own doing by the way they handled the most recent shooting in Minnesota. The, kind of, passage of time has allowed them to take a position or plan to have a posture during this hearing with their officials that is a combination of defiance and making very clear that this was what the president ran on, what he was elected for and what they plan on continuing in the months ahead. (…)