As several MSNBC anchors covered the arrest of a landscaper and illegal alien, Narciso Barranco, in Santa Ana, California, they refused to show viewers video of him using his weed whacker to swing at a couple of Border Patrol agents even after it was released by Custom and Border Protection.
Nicolle Wallace covered it on her Deadline: White House show on three different days, beginning on June 23. She intoned: “A brutal new video shows just exactly what mass deportation looks like under the Trump administration. Alarming footage of approximately seven masked men wearing U.S. Customs and Border Patrol vests pinning down and beating a father of three U.S. Marines while others watched before forcing him into an unmarked vehicle.”
Reporter Jacob Soboroff made an appearance on the show and declared that the Department of Homeland Security is trying to “deliberately terrorize — to scare people.”
On the next day, Wallace scoffed at DHS accusing Barranco of attacking agents, calling it “propaganda.” Wallace:
DHS is in full — what should we call it? — pushback slash propaganda mode on this story — called him an “illegal alien trying to evade law enforcement.” They say that reports that he dislocated his shoulder are false. They say he swung weed whacker that he had been holding at an agent, but footage from several different angles seemed to undercut DHS’s claim. They show Barranco was holding the weed whacker just running away from the agents while still holding the weed whacker because, as we said, he was at work weed whacking.
Wallace and several other MSNBC hosts ignored a stronger video released by CBP and instead focused on a more ambiguous video clip released by DHS. CBP sent out the video on June 24 in response to Soboroff’s reporting, which shows two agents walking behind Barranco when he turned around and made what a appeared to be a deliberate swing at the two agents, but various MSNBC shows ignored the video and insisted that there was little if any evidence of DHS’s accusations.
On the June 24 show, Wallace and Soboroff interviewed one of Barranco’s sons, Alejandro, and let him deny that his father had attacked agents. At one point, Soboroff cued him up to compare his father’s treatment to a war crime:
SOBOROFF: You served in Afghanistan. What would have happened if you would have treated a detainee that way in the Marines?
BARRANCO: I promise you, it would have been a war crime, and the situation would have been completely different.
She also repeated a couple of times her debunked claims that only a small percentage of Americans support deporting illegal immigrants who have jobs.
Later that evening, host Lawrence O’Donnell lambasted DHS and insisted that they had no case to accuse Barranco of attacking agents: “Narciso Barranco is not a criminal. He was doing his landscaping job for an IHOP in Santa Ana, California, when Border Patrol agents chased him, threw him to the ground, beat him, and handcuffed him. And now, those agents want you to believe that he committed the crime of resisting arrest…”
A bit later, he declared:
The Trump agents are now telling the story that Mr. Barranco was trying to assault them with that weed whacker, and they pretend that the video proves that when the video does not show that at all. It shows Mr. Barranco carrying his tool — his work tool — as he runs away from these people who are coming at him that way. Doesn’t show him trying to hit anyone with any weed whacker at all in that video. So if that’s the proof — if that’s the evidence they want to take into court, they’re not going to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt anything about what happened with that weed whacker. There’s no video showing that.
Other MSNBC anchors who gave coverage to the story on their shows include Chris Hayes, Ana Cabrera, and Katy Tur, and all omitted the more incriminating video sent out by CBP.
Transcripts follow:
MSNBC’s Deadline: White House
June 23, 2025
5:36 p.m. Eastern
NICOLLE WALLACE: A brutal new video shows just exactly what mass deportation looks like under the Trump administration. Alarming footage of approximately seven masked men wearing U.S. Customs and Border Patrol vests pinning down and beating a father of three U.S. Marines while others watched before forcing him into an unmarked vehicle. Take a look for yourself.
(…)
JACOB SOBOROFF: … two hundred pound plus men kneeling — just watch it — beating a man who was out there cutting grass. He was cutting grass. And these heavily armed masked agents who don’t identify themselves to people who are alleging that he tried to attack them with his weed whacker when, in fact, if you watch the video that DHS has put up, he was being sprayed with some kind of pepper spray as he ran away. They’re ubiquitous all over the city right now, and the tactic is deliberately to terrorize — to scare people.
(…)
WALLACE: The political reality is that 15 (percent), 12 (percent), and nine (percent) — those are the numbers of Americans that support deporting people who have American-born children as this person — as this gentleman Narciso does. … They don’t support deporting people with jobs. They don’t support deporting people with jobs. So all of the raids are taking place — where are they taking place? At Home Deport parking lots, as restaurants, in agricultural — those are all people at work. Those are all — they’re only looking for people with jobs. There is very little evidence that they are pursuing the actual adjudicated criminals.
(…)
SOBOROFF: And when I watched armed Border Patrol agents crush a father of three Marines because he was outside an IHOP, I think of that phrase, “Weakness masquerading as strength.”
(…)
Deadline: White House
June 24, 2025
5:05 p.m.
WALLACE: DHS is in full — what should we call it? — pushback slash propaganda mode on this story — called him an “illegal alien trying to evade law enforcement.” They say that reports that he dislocated his shoulder are false. They say he swung weed whacker that he had been holding at an agent, but footage from several different angles seemed to undercut DHS’s claim. They show Barranco was holding the weed whacker just running away from the agents while still holding the weed whacker because, as we said, he was at work weed whacking. He was pepper sprayed by one of the agents before even getting into any sort of physical altercation at all. So he already had impaired vision, and, as you can see on the video, was much smaller than one of the agents, and there were multiple. DHS has not responded to NBC’s questions regarding the new videos.
(…)
SOBOROFF: Did you tell your dad what the Department of Homeland Security is saying about him — that he tried to assault them? I wonder if you guys talked about then what he said?
ALEJANDRO BARRANCO, SON OF ILLEGAL ALIEN WHO WAS ARRESTED: I asked him. I said — that was part of the things that I asked him — I said, “Hey, they’re trying to say that you hit them with a weed whacker.” When he heard that, he like, he was shocked — he was confused like, “What? When?” And I was like, “I’m not sure when they’re saying.” … I see the video, but it’s natural human movement — natural human reaction. He gets pepper sprayed like seconds before that. He said he never intended to hurt anyone. He never intended to hit anyone, and it’s just natural movement.
SOBOROFF: You — you’re a Marine Corps veteran, and your two brothers, Alejandro, are serving active duty in the Marines right now. The three of you all received training on use of force as Marines. When you look at the video of how those agents treated your father, do you agree with what Homeland Security said — that that was a minimum use of force?
BARRANCO: I think it’s the complete opposite. I think it’s the maximum amount of force, and I think unprofessional force. …
SOBOROFF: You served in Afghanistan. What would have happened if you would have treated a detainee that way in the Marines?
BARRANCO: I promise you, it would have been a war crime, and the situation would have been completely different.
(…)
MSNBC’s The Last Word
June 24, 2025
10:10 p.m. Eastern
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Narciso Barranco is not a criminal. He was doing his landscaping job for an IHOP in Santa Ana, California, when Border Patrol agents chased him, threw him to the ground, beat him, and handcuffed him. And now, those agents want you to believe that he committed the crime of resisting arrest — an arrest made by out of control masked men, including one chasing with a gun held in one hand that was then aimed innocently — aimed at an innocent passing car. A car innocently pulls up in the parking lot as this is happening, and one of those agents sticks the gun right at the windshield of that car for absolutely no reason, holding the gun one-handed — the kind of police conduct that would get you fired at any well-run police department in America.
There were very dangerous people running when Mr. Barranco was running for his life, and he was not one of those dangerous people. This is a story of two videos, both of which tell a story of very, very bad law enforcement work. Here’s the Instagram video that went viral this weekend publicizing the case of Mr. Barranco. (shows video of Barranco being held on the ground and then being put into a vehicle by officers) In their defense — they think it’s a defense — the Department of Homeland Security very stupidly and proudly posted another video of that encounter that included other angles and shows running away from the officers — shows a wildly out of control officer brandishing a gun the way cops in movies used to hold guns before actors learned how guns are supposed to be held.
Here’s the video which shows Mr. Barranco carrying his work tool — which, of course, is a weed whacker — as he was running away from masked, unidentifiable men approaching him with guns. (wrong video is shown) That wasn’t the video we were trying to show you. The control room will let me know if we get the video that will show you the chase part of the video that will show you the officer with the gun being brandished like this, holding it out, aiming it first of all at the person he was chasing and then turning it to aim it at a car. All of that is captured on the video that the Department of Homeland Security then released, thinking it was a defensive video.
(…)
The Trump agents are now telling the story that Mr. Barranco was trying to assault them with that weed whacker, and they pretend that the video proves that when the video does not show that at all. It shows Mr. Barranco carrying his tool — his work tool — as he runs away from these people who are coming at him that way. Doesn’t show him trying to hit anyone with any weed whacker at all in that video. So if that’s the proof — if that’s the evidence they want to take into court, they’re not going to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt anything about what happened with that weed whacker. There’s no video showing that.
(…)
Deadline: White House
June 26, 2025
5:35 p.m.
WALLACE: The video of Narciso’s arrest is shocking and deeply disturbing. While at work doing his job as a landscaper, he was beaten by ICE agents and shoved into an unmarked car. It shocked millions of Americans. Alejandro now tells NBC News that his dad has been transferred to Adelanto, a private prison in the desert outside of Los Angeles.
(…)
Nine, 12, and 15 percent — that’s the number of Americans who support detaining people who have American-born children, who are married to U.S. citizens, or who have a job. He checks all those boxes.
