On his eponymous Sunday morning show, MSNBC's Ali Velshi let Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) compare ICE agents to slave patrols and claim they are committing crimes, and Velshi fretted that President Donald Trump is creating a police force that is "lacking accountability," and agreed with Crockett's assertions that the way to fight crime is with poverty programs and focusing on guns.
Shortly after 10:00 a.m., Velshi put a negative spin on using the National Guard to help cut crime as he introduced the first segment: "We begin this morning with the promise -- the threat of a fresh escalation of Donald Trump's campaign to take over the streets of American cities with unwanted, unwelcome deployments of federalized National Guard troops." Unwanted by whom?
After Crockett came aboard as a guest, she alluded to ICE agents recently killing a suspect in Chicago and suggested that ICE committed a crime by doing so:
We know, as we've seen this over-policing as it relates to ICE as well as these criminal acts that are actually being perpetrated by ICE. We just saw that someone was killed in Chicago, so, like, I don't know who is bringing more crime to the streets right now, especially when it comes to ICE. So the over-policing has never worked.
Velshi agreed: "It's just statistical. I mean, we know it doesn't work, right? We know in cities where crime has been reduced, it's been reduced through -- it's a number of things at the same time One of which is poverty reduction. Right? And poverty reduction programs have been killed under the Big Beautiful Bill."
It was not mentioned that the suspect who was killed resisted arrest and seriously injured an ICE agent by dragging him with his car! Let's guess Velshi wouldn't think that was "unruly."
A bit later, Crockett defended shoplifting as she claimed that some people who commit crimes are not criminals.
And, during a discussion of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the Trump administration can continue to do ICE raids in Los Angeles in spite of a lower court ruling, Velshi complained about the kind of police force President Trump is building: "...how can people who like Donald Trump or don't like Donald Trump understand that he seems to be building a police force that is not subject to the normal rules that either policing or military should be subject to? It's a sort of a police force that's lacking accountability."
Even though past statistics suggest that about 2,000 homicides are committed by immigrants each year that are actually known about, Crockett soon claimed that "white supremacists" kill several times more people than immigrants:
We're not looking at the fact that immigrants, regardless of how many times you're going to cherry pick and say, "Well, there was this one immigrant that was here illegally, and they ended up killing this one person" -- well, for every immigrant that you have an example of, I'll raise you at least two to five white supremacists, if not more, right?
She went on to claim that ICE reminds her of slave patrols:
But, as somebody who understands history, when I see ICE, I see slave patrols. Now, I never lived through the slave patrol period, but if you know the history of policing in this country, then you understand that they were born out of slave patrols. And now with the Supreme Court saying this, it's almost like you can just go grab them up. That is what they're saying. And that is a problem.
The MSNBC host gave no pushback as he just wrapped up the segment.
Transcript follows:
MSNBC's Velshi
September 14, 2025
10:00 a.m. Eastern
ALI VELSHI: We begin this morning with the promise -- the threat of a fresh escalation of Donald Trump's campaign to take over the streets of American cities with unwanted, unwelcome deployments of federalized National Guard troops.
(...)
I talked to Justin Pearson yesterday from Memphis, and one of the smart things about people who come from cities where there are crime rates is that they don't -- they don't rely on these statistics that say violent crime is down by X percentage -- they realize that violent crime is a bad thing --
CONGRESSWOMAN JASMINE CROCKETT (D-TX): Exactly.
VELSHI: -- and everybody thinks so.
CROCKETT: Exactly.
VELSHI: And the ways in which you undercut violent crime are through things that happen in communities, through gun violence protection. Those are not the things that are happening here. So Justin Pearson was all about the fact that "Yeah, we got a crime problem -- we're really happy to have the federal government's help," but this doesn't ever solve that problem.
CROCKETT: No. They don't like facts -- they absolutely detest these things -- but even when you look at what Maxwell Frost did, Maxwell Frost led the way as to the creation of the gun violence prevention office within the White House. What did Donald Trump do?
VELSHI: Which was really -- really successful until January 20.
CROCKETT: What did Donald Trump do:
VELSHI: I think he shut it down on the first day or something.
CROCKETT: He absolutely did. He got rid of it. And so we have the data that shows what it takes to bring this down.
(...)
CROCKETT: We know, as we've seen this over-policing as it relates to ICE as well as these criminal acts that are actually being perpetrated by ICE. We just saw that someone was killed in Chicago, so, like, I don't know who is bringing more crime to the streets right now, especially when it comes to ICE. So the over-policing has never worked.
VELSHI: It's just statistical. I mean, we know it doesn't work, right? We know in cities where crime has been reduced, it's been reduced through -- it's a number of things at the same time --
CROCKETT: Exactly.
VELSHI: One of which is poverty reduction.
CROCKETT: Absolutely.
VELSHI: Right? And poverty reduction programs have been killed --
CROCKETT: Yeah
VELSHI: -- under the Big Beautiful Bill.
CROCKETT: Yeah.
VELSHI: And the DOGE cuts.
CROCKETT: And poverty is on its way up.
VELSHI: And SNAP has been cut.
CROCKETT: Yeah.
VELSHI: Who's making -- who's fraudulently using SNAP? And what do you? What do you trade off your six bucks for?
CROCKETT: Correct. Your six dollars a day. Like these are the people that are getting rich off of the federal government (inaudible) ...
VELSHI: Yeah, yeah, but that's conceptually our problem, right? That we're scraping every last dollar -- we're squeezing every last dollar out of people who can least afford it --
CROCKETT: Exactly.
VELSHI: -- so that the merger can go through with Union Pacific.
CROCKETT: Exactly, exactly. But that's everything that they're doing. Everything is about the billionaires.
(...)
But you speak about poverty and you speak about crime. As someone who was a public defender, I can tell you that I better understand some of the things that end up allowing for crime to proliferate in certain communities. And I do want to make this distinction. Just because there is crime taking place, it does not necessarily mean that it is a "criminal." There is a difference -- there are people that literally are engaging in crime out of necessity. And they have, you know, defenses that they can wage and things like that. There are people that are saying, "Listen, I need to take care of my child, and so I need to get this formula. I need to get these diapers, and I'm going to do what I've got to do."
(...)
10:22 a.m.
VELSHI: And of course the complication here is because of the shadow docket stuff -- you would think that if you're going to attack something that is an amendment in the Constitution, and you're going to say that there's something wrong with it, I'd like to have a thorough airing of that.
CROCKETT: Yes, yeah. No oral arguments on this issue -- not hearing where the sides are coming from -- not hearing from the justices and having them ask questions and really test it and make sure that it stands up to constitutional muster. No, it is a very dangerous thing to do, especially in this time of over-policing --
VELSHI: Yeah.
CROCKETT: -- by this out of control executive.
VELSHI: That's the issue, right? That's where I'm trying to figure out, how can people who like Donald Trump or don't like Donald Trump understand that he seems to be building a police force that is not subject to the normal rules that either policing or military should be subject to. It's a sort of a police force that's lacking accountability.
CROCKETT: No, there is no accountability, and it's going after its American people, right? Like the idea that any of us want to be unsafe in this country is absolutely absurd, right? I don't care what your political affiliation is -- I don't care what your cultural background is -- none of us want to be unsafe.
VELSHI: Yeah.
CROCKETT: But we're not looking at the facts. We're not looking at the fact that immigrants, regardless of how many times you're going to cherry pick and say, "Well, there was this one immigrant that was here illegally, and they ended up killing this one person" -- well, for every immigrant that you have an example of, I'll raise you at least two to five white supremacists, if not more, right?
(...)
CROCKETT: But, as somebody who understands history, when I see ICE, I see slave patrols. Now, I never lived through the slave patrol period, but if you know the history of policing in this country, then you understand that they were born out of slave patrols. And now with the Supreme Court saying this, it's almost like you can just go grab them up. That is what they're saying. And that is a problem. We all should have a problem with that, but when you don't want to teach American history that includes black history, then you lose out on the benefit of understanding that we have been down this road before. And it was not good, and we fixed it once, and it is a shame that we are relitigating this, and we're going to have to fix it again.
VELSHI: Jasmine Crockett, always happy to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us.