'A government agency out of control': Navarro, Sunshine get into heated exchange over ICE killings

A CNN discussion on Immigration and Customs Enforcement's killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo turned heated after former Trump aide Caroline Sunshine pressed political commentator Ana Navarro on the names of Americans killed by undocumented immigrants. Navarro fired back by asking Sunshine to name people killed by U.S. citizens. "..there's a hell of a lot more people that have been killed by U.S. citizens than people who have been killed by illegal aliens," she said, in one of the sharpest moments on American TV recently.

Navarro, who also works as a political strategist, was talking about how Araujo's shooting did not take place in a vacuum. "It's the latest case. But there's been at least five people killed by ICE in the streets of America. Rubén Rey Martínez, a young man killed in South Padre Island in Texas. Silverio Villegas-González. Keith Porter, they killed him in LA. Rene Good and Alex Pretti were killed in Minnesota," Navarro said while appearing on CNN's NewsNight with Abby Phillip as a guest.

Sunshine then interrupted Navarro with a pointed question: "Do you know the names of Americans who've been killed by illegal immigrants? Do you have that list, too?" Navarro appeared confounded by the question at first, as Sunshine kept pressing it in different ways, but she eventually answered that she doesn't keep a list but knows some of the names. Sunshine and Navarro have sparred on numerous occasions, most recently during a debate on Trump's treatment of women journalists.

The 54-year-old didn't pull her punches, arguing that she wasn't interested in a contest over who knows the names. "I want to pronounce these names because we need to put names and faces (to these) stories," Navarro said. It was at this moment that she turned the tables on Sunshine, asking her point blank to name people killed by U.S. citizens—a question Sunshine deemed irrelevant.

Navarro eventually brought it home by steering the discussion toward ICE's culpability. "We are talking about a government agency that is out of control, killing even American citizens, killing immigrants without a criminal record who are not the targets of the investigation, lying about it as they have done, with no full investigations and accountability," she concluded. At that point, it was noted on air that ICE-related fatalities in immigration sweeps stood at eight, according to the Associated Press.

Salgado's, who had been living in the country for nearly three decades, was shot dead, triggering widespread protests as demonstrators ‌demanded an independent inquiry into Tuesday's incident. Salgado had no criminal history, and what makes matters worse, was not the intended target. The officers tried to stop Salgado's vehicle because it looked like "a white van with an individual who resembled the target" of an operation, at which point he allegedly rammed an ICE van, and the officer shot in self-defence.