Immigration, ‘reality TV style’: Dr. Phil on the ground with ICE in Los Angeles
Talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw is set to air footage from his exclusive access to immigration officials in Los Angeles before and after the raids that sparked protests, clashes with authorities and the federal deployment of the California National Guard over the weekend.
McGraw was at the Los Angeles Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office and filmed multiple exclusive interviews with President Donald Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan before and after the raids, CNN reported Monday morning.
A spokesperson for McGraw’s Fort Worth-based media company Merit Street Media said in an emailed statement that the TV personality was on the ground with ICE “to get a first-hand look at the targeted operations.”
The interviews were expected to air on his show “Dr. Phil Primetime” on Monday and Tuesday nights.
“Dr. Phil talks with Tom Homan about how strong leadership and tough enforcement are delivering historic border security and saving lives,” reads Monday’s episode description on the Merit TV website. The blurb touts the interview as an “unfiltered conversation about America’s evolving approach to border security and immigration enforcement.”
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Clashes between protesters and law enforcement in Los Angeles over the weekend prompted Trump to invoke a rarely used federal statute to deploy 300 California National Guard troops to the city. Governors usually make deployment decisions for their states’ National Guards. The unrest continued Monday.
Dr. Phil and ICE part of evolving news consumption
McGraw’s close work alongside immigration authorities is representative of a transformation in how Americans consume news, according to Natalie Jomini Stroud, director of the Center for Media Engagement at UT Austin.
“Providing the public with a first-hand look at newsworthy events has long been something that news organizations do,” she said in an email. “We’re witnessing an increasing shift in who provides these accounts from traditional media to influencers on social media or Dr. Phil last week.”
Stroud referred to a 2022 study she and her colleagues conducted that looked into the reasons for participants’ belief in election fraud claims after the 2020 election. The study found a “crisis of trust” among respondents.
“One common response was that they wanted to ‘do their own research’ and trusted first-hand, on-the-ground reports,” she said, adding, “A reality TV style may be particularly appealing” to people who have lost trust in traditional news sources.
Unlike his presence during raids in Chicago in January, McGraw did not accompany ICE agents on the operations in Los Angeles in order to “not escalate any situation,” the Merit TV spokesperson said, adding that McGraw “was not embedded.”
An interview with Homan published on the Merit TV website featured the cutline: “Dr. Phil embeds with ICE once again to show The Real Story, on the ground, in LA.” After the Star-Telegram asked about it, the spokesperson said McGraw was not embedded and that the cutline would be changed.
During the January operation, McGraw expressed surprise when he was recognized by a man who Homan described as undocumented and accused of being convicted of sex crimes against children.
“Are you Dr. Phil?” the man asked as McGraw interrogated him about his deportation history.
“How do you know me?” McGraw asked.
“I saw you on Dr. Phil,” the man answered.
Dr. Phil with ICE ‘designed to create fear’ in immigrant communities
McGraw’s collaborations with ICE are meant to send clear messages to the public, according to Denise Gilman, a law professor and director of the Immigration Clinic at UT Austin.
“I’ve never seen anything like this, where a law enforcement entity is not just allowing access to people from the media, but really sort of sensationalizing their exercise of law enforcement powers,” she said in an interview, adding it is “designed to create fear” in immigrant communities.
“It’s immigration enforcement as spectacle with the specific intent to terrorize our immigrant neighbors,” Gilman said.
She contrasted recent actions in immigration courts in San Antonio, where judges have increasingly put up road blocks for lawyers and other outside observers in immigration hearings, with the “unprecedented access” McGraw was given over the weekend in Los Angeles.
“It seems pretty obvious that they’re trying to ensure deep access for those who share this desire to create fear in the immigrant community, and they want to deny access to those who are seeking to document this questionable action, and to document the human lives that are being impacted by these enforcement actions,” Gilman said.
The participation of a TV personality like Dr. Phil is “par for the course for an administration determined to turn immigration enforcement into a spectacle,” according to Blaine Bookey, legal director at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California College of the Law in San Francisco.
“Since taking office, the administration has consistently used its bully pulpit to dehumanize immigrants, stoke fear in communities, and treat families’ trauma as entertainment for their base,” she said in a text message.
Whether immigrant communities watch Dr. Phil Primetime or not, the Trump administration’s immigration agenda appears to have instilled fear in Tarrant County’s undocumented population.
One resident without legal status told the Star-Telegram her family is “very tense, very afraid of going out.”
The Star-Telegram is not publishing her name out of safety concerns.
“The situation is really awful,” she said.
This story was originally published June 9, 2025 at 4:04 PM.
