President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security is expanding a shadowy part of its operations, according to a new report.

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reported on Tuesday on a "graciously explicit" job posting from a long-time defense contracting company called Xcelerate Solutions, which is hiring a "Top Secret-cleared analyst to join the 'watchlisting team'" that supports Immigration and Customs Enforcement's "watchlist apparatus." The report was published at a time when the Trump administration's immigration forces are facing increased scrutiny over their actions in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where two U.S. citizens were shot and killed by federal agents.

The job posting said the analyst will identify "criminal networks," nominate "individuals eligible for the watchlist," and "deconflict" previously nominated individuals, Klippenstein reported.

He also noted that DHS officials, including departing spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin and acting ICE director Todd Lyons, have denied the existence of ICE's watchlist apparatus. Klippenstein argued that those denials "rely on technicalities" because the term "watchlist" has a certain definition in the national security world.

"In the national security world, a 'watchlist' is a specific legal term of art to describe the Terrorist Screening Dataset, which itself used to be called the Terrorist Screening Database because it once referred to one single watchlist (now there are many)," Klippenstein wrote.

"By claiming they don’t have a 'watchlist,' homeland security isn’t saying they aren’t tracking people; they are saying they aren’t using that specific administrative bucket," he added. "At least, that was before the job announcement revealed that indeed ICE was referring to a watchlist of its own."

Read the entire report by clicking here.

A 2-month-old infant who was detained with his mother at a federal detention facility has been deported after his case gained national notoriety because he fell ill and eventually became unresponsive amid a bout with bronchitis.

Juan Nicolás was detained at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dilley, Texas. He was held there for about three weeks, suffering from bronchitis and respiratory issues, including an episode where he became unresponsive and had to be hospitalized.

After a flurry of outrage on Tuesday, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) said the baby and his family had been deported with almost no money on them.

"After a discussion with their attorney, I have confirmed that Juan, his 16-month-old sister, his mom, and his dad have been deported," Castro wrote in an update on X. "According to their attorney, ICE deported the family with only the money that they had in their commissary—a total of $190. To unnecessarily deport a sick baby and his entire family is heinous."

Castro said he and his staff are in contact with the family.

"We are laser-focused on tracking them down, holding ICE accountable for this monstrous action, demanding specific details on their whereabouts and wellbeing, and ensuring their safety," he said.

In a separate post, Castro said the family was "abandoned across the border in Mexico."

The news reverberated across social media.

North Carolina congressional candidate Valerie Voushee wrote on X, "ICE deported Juan Nicolás, a child who spent three weeks in the Dilley ICE Detention Center in Texas and is suffering from bronchitis, to Mexico. This agency is beyond reform and threatens all of us. Deporting a sick child is completely inhumane—we need answers immediately."

Mai El-Sadany, a human rights attorney, wrote on X, "If you think abolishing ICE is too radical, I'd love to learn what you think there is left to save of an agency that is more interested in deportation counts than saving the life of a two-month old baby with bronchitis."

Applied scientist Rex Douglass wrote on X, "Since our fascist regime is about to change the subject by starting a war, just internalize they dumped a sick baby outside the country with no resources because it was politically embarrassing."

Kurt Bardella, author of The Watchdog Report on Substack, simply added, "The cruelty is the point."

MS NOW's Antonia Hylton profiled departing Department of Homeland Security official Tricia McLaughlin — a woman who, in her Hylton's words, is "known for her combative posture to the press and a relationship to the truth that is at times tenuous."

Hylton opened the segment on Tuesday night with a clip of McLaughlin, a key media-facing figure, accusing Democrats of inviting terrorism against border officials.

"There's a highly coordinated campaign of violence against our law enforcement," said McLaughlin in the clip. "There are foreign terrorist organizations who are going after our law enforcement who are shooting at them. The Democrat Party has decided that violence against law enforcement is okay. These rioters, these Democrat politicians, are protecting the worst of the worst criminal, illegal aliens among us. These agitators, these rioters are protecting these criminals. They're talking about this is racially based. Absolutely not."

"For the past year, McLaughlin has basically been the main gatekeeper for information out of DHS, and she has provided journalists, including myself, with non-responses," said Hylton. "Outrage at our lines of questioning, even smears for the immigrants whose stories we've told on this network. Blame for the protesters, for the violence that they suffered, suggesting Renee Good, for example, was a domestic terrorist, saying Alex Pretti violently resisted the officers who shot him to death. And when DHS social media accounts began to push out a steady stream of content that experts warned were full of racist dog whistles and white nationalist content, McLaughlin dismissed criticisms as cherry-picking."

Furthermore, Hylton continued, "like her boss Kristi Noem, McLaughlin has faced questions about possible corruption. Last year, ProPublica investigated a $220 million DHS contract to produce a series of video ads starring Kristi Noem, and the main beneficiary of that contract was a company whose CEO is married to, you guessed it, Tricia McLaughlin. She told ProPublica, quote, 'My marriage is one thing and work is another. I don't combine them.'"

"McLaughlin explained how she views that work in an interview last month with her hometown paper, the Cincinnati Enquirer," she continued, "Quote: 'Media is so much of the battle, so to speak, on the immigration issue. So much of the debate is a public relations debate. It's a PR war.' McLaughlin often fought dirty in that war, and now it appears she's throwing in the towel, leaving behind a badly scarred department after setting its credibility, and at times her own, on fire."

"Make no mistake: DHS is still, according to experts and judges, regularly violating people's rights, taking orders from Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, of course," said Hylton. "And they have the massive war chest that they got in Trump's big budget bill. And even this shutdown can't keep their agents off the streets right now, but their momentum is slowing. Their agency is in limbo, and their spokesperson is now out the door."

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