Tonight’s CBS Evening News attempted to instill in viewers a scary mental image of ICE agents bursting into Los Angeles schools in order to conduct immigration raids. In so doing, they omit a critical detail that would crumble the narrative they are attempting to craft.
Watch the report in its entirety, as aired on the CBS Evening News on Thursday, August 14th, 2025 (click “expand” to view transcript):
MAURICE DuBOIS: Today was the first day of a new school year in Los Angeles. The nation's second largest school system. It has more than 500,000 students in a county where more than a third of the residents are immigrants. This year, Carter Evans reports, teachers are keeping an eye out for potential ICE Reads.
CARTER EVANS: As students headed back to school across Los Angeles, little about this first day felt normal. School officials, teachers, and community groups are setting up the so-called safe zones in heavily Latino neighborhoods, focused on high schools where students walk to campus.
ALEX STRANGELOVE: For us as educators, we are the front line.
EVANS: Alex Strangelove is a physics teacher at Hollywood High, one of those safe zones. Today her lesson plans included being on the lookout.
What are they looking for?
STRANGELOVE: They're looking for unmarked cars. They want to make sure that our students are not being accosted, and they just want to provide a safe pathway.
EVANS: Earlier this week, federal agents detained a 15-year-old special-needs student at gunpoint outside an L.A. high school where his sister was registering for classes. He was quickly released, but it's one reason L.A. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho called for volunteers and school employees to protect students.
Are you concerned that there could potentially be a confrontation in the streets between school employees, school police, and ICE?
ALBERTO CARVALHO: That should never be the case. Our individuals have been trained on protocol, steps to take. None of those steps include direct interference with legal proceedings or raid activities.
EVANS: So they cannot stop it?
CARVALHO: We cannot stop it. It is illegal for us to stop it.
EVANS: Sam Dovlatian is principal at Hollywood High.
SAM DOVLATIAN: I cannot imagine coming to work every day worrying about, you know, ICE agents showing up at your doorsteps. It puts fear in the student, and it puts fear on us.
EVANS: We checked with the school district to see how many times federal agents have actually tried to enter L.A. schools. It's happened twice. Both times, at elementary schools.
DuBOIS: Carter Evans in Los Angeles. Thank you.
Anchor Maurice DuBois and correspondent Carter Evans evoke imagery of ICE raids, allude to “heavily Latino neighborhoods”, and zero in on high schools. The story is tailor-made for race-based scaremongering.
Except, that is, that the story begins to crumble almost immediately. After interviewing a purple-haired teacher, Evans turns to LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho who then states that the school district is not allowed to interfere with enforcement activity. “It is illegal for us to stop it”, said Carvalho.
After interviewing a local high school principal, Evans wraps his report with this statement on ICE attempting to enter Los Angeles elementary schools:
EVANS: We checked with the school district to see how many times federal agents have actually tried to enter L.A. schools. It's happened twice. Both times, at elementary schools.
Why did they enter? Evans doesn’t say. Viewers are left to surmise that ICE went in there in order to grab a couple of kindergarteners. In so doing, Evans leaves out a very important truth that would destroy the story. From K-12 DIVE:
The incidents involved agents for Homeland Security Investigations, a division within Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, DHS said in an email to K-12 Dive. School leaders at LAUSD’s Russell Elementary School and Lillian Street Elementary School checked with their district leadership and legal counsel before turning away the agents. DHS said the officers left “without incident” after school leaders refused to share information on the children without a court order or warrant.
…
DHS maintains that the incidents were “wellness checks on children who arrived unaccompanied at the border.”
“This had nothing to do with immigration enforcement,” said Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, in a statement to K-12 Dive on April 11. McLaughlin said the check was to ensure the children “are safe and not being exploited, abused, Two times. Twice ICE went into an elementary school, per the report. They went in to check on unaccompanied minors who may have been sex trafficked prior to enrollment.
That’s a pretty big thing to leave off the report. Reasonable individuals may conclude that the omission was intentional and in service of a narrative of endless ICE raids in heavily Latino neighborhoods- as CBS did here. And that is simply shameful.