In December, CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss provoked internal and external criticism by postponing a 60 Minutes segment about President Donald Trump's deportation of suspected Venezuelan gang members to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), a notorious prison in El Salvador. "We need to do a better job of explaining the legal rationale by which the administration detained and deported these 252 Venezuelans to CECOT," Weiss wrote in a memo that elucidated her reservations about the story. "It's not as simple as Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act [AEA] and being able to deport them immediately. And that isn't the administration's argument."
Weiss noted that the government's lawyers had "argued in court that detainees are entitled to 'judicial review.'" She said "we should explain this, with a voice arguing that Trump is exceeding his authority under the [AEA], and another arguing that he's operating within the bounds of his authority." She thought the story should make it clear that "there's a genuine debate here."
