As authorities stepped up enforcement operations around the United States on Sunday, Phil McGraw, the former host of a daytime talk program, tweeted a video of himself riding along with immigration agents in Chicago.
McGraw, a former psychotherapist who became well-known with Oprah Winfrey and presented Dr. Phil for over 20 years, claimed to have embedded himself with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to demonstrate the agency’s focused efforts to capture terrorists and known criminals.
In an interview with McGraw on the one-year-old network Merit Street Media, which was founded by the former talk-show host, Trump administration border czar Thomas Homan advised viewers to disregard the myth that immigration officials are conducting neighborhood sweeps that target people of color.
He answered, “Look at what we actually do.”
legal advocates caution people of their right to due process when they interact with authorities, regardless of their legal status, and enforcement activities follow President Donald Trump’s pledge to implement what he called the greatest mass deportation plan in U.S. history.
After the Department of Homeland Security reversed a decades-old policy last week that prohibited immigration officials from conducting raids in sensitive settings, such as places of worship and schools, without prior authorization, a group of Quaker congregations filed a lawsuit against the agency on Monday.
Nearly 1,200 individuals were arrested by ICE officials on Sunday, the agency reported, the most in a single day since Trump took office. According to a top Trump administration official, about half of individuals in custody had no criminal histories.
The former talk show host is seen interrogating a man who looks to be handcuffed and standing on a street close to Homan in a video that was uploaded to McGraw’s X profile.
The man is heard requesting a lawyer at one point. The man responds, “Are you Dr. Phil?” when McGraw asks him if he has ever been deported.
How are you acquainted with me? McGraw answers.
“I saw you on ‘Dr. Phil,'” he commented.
Homan claims in the video that the man is undocumented and has a criminal record for sex crimes involving minors. The man responds, “Not really,” when McGraw inquires as to whether he committed the alleged offenses.
A request for comment was not immediately answered by an ICE spokeswoman.
Speaking at Trump’s event in October at Madison Square Garden, McGraw, who canceled his daytime show in 2023, described the then-candidate as “tough as an old army boot.”McGraw later stated in an interview that the presence was not an endorsement.