Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin has slammed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for arresting a former interpreter for the U.S. Army after he attended his asylum hearing in San Diego.
“This should anger every American,” Griffin, the network’s chief national security correspondent, wrote on X, after footage showed masked ICE agents taking the Afghan national away in handcuffs as he exited a courtroom on the fourth floor of a downtown courthouse.
The interpreter, whose name has been kept anonymous due to fears of Taliban retaliation if he is deported, reportedly risked his life for three years supporting U.S. forces in one of Afghanistan’s most dangerous regions.
Griffin was responding to a post on X criticizing the arrest, which read: “This guy HELPED OUR TROOPS. He hasn’t broken a single law. He was doing everything ‘right’ to seek asylum. And yet ICE threw him in detention anyway, with the goal of handing him to the Taliban. This outrageous behavior by ICE is why people are accompanying immigrants to court.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to ICE for comment.
Video of the arrest has sparked outrage.
“Yeah, get him,” one agent said in another in the clip. “Take him. Go ahead, take him.”
“I came here to make a better life,” the man can be heard pleading. “I didn’t know that this would happen… I worked with the U.S. military. I worked in a very dangerous part of Afghanistan with the U.S. military.”
His attorney, Brian McGoldrick, told the Times of San Diego that his client had served as both a translator and assistant to U.S. Army units in Afghanistan.
The man had entered the U.S. legally via the CBP One app following the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and was actively pursuing a “Special Immigrant Visa.”
His brother, McGoldrick said, had been granted asylum in Texas last month.
“What is the government doing?” McGoldrick asked. “That one brother is being granted asylum and the other has to be treated like a criminal to be thrown out of the country?”
McGoldrick said his client believes he is likely to face detention, torture, or death if deported to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
“While he was in Afghanistan, he was threatened repeatedly,” McGoldrick added to NBC7. “His family was threatened repeatedly. He believes that if he returns, he’ll be detained, probably tortured, and possibly even killed.”
The man was detained despite having another court date scheduled this summer, the Times reported.
The controversy arrives as Fox News itself is embroiled in a different kind of internal battle within the MAGA movement.
Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, who was ousted from Fox News in 2023, has publicly sparred with the network’s pundit Mark Levin, calling his speaking style “screechy”.
“It’s like listening to your ex-wife scream about alimony payments,” Carlson said, attacking his former employer over what he sees as its on-air support of U.S. military intervention in the escalating Iran-Israel crisis.
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