Latest
2 hours agoLifelong Democrat Sheriff Quits the Party After Locals Told Him to Leave for Backing Rogers and James2 hours agoTaco Bell Coworker’s Tip Stopped a Self-Described Neo-Nazi’s Alleged Plot Against an Aurora Hindu Temple4 hours agoParalympian Veteran Waited 5 Years for a Wheelchair Lift. She Says Canada Offered Her Assisted Death.4 hours agoGlenview Teen Shot Dead at Home: Sheriff Says Evidence Is There, Cook County Still Won’t Charge5 hours agoRhode Island Ruled Him Incompetent for 23 Years and Let Him Walk. Now a Toddler Was Stabbed in Her Stroller.5 hours agoHistorian Recounts Digging Through a Building Floor on Tarawa to Bring 11 Missing Americans Home5 hours agoHe Says He Refused a DNR for His Wife Five Times. The Hospital Put It on Her Chart Anyway.10 hours agoIDF Kills Hamas Weapons Commander Who Infiltrated Israel on October 711 hours agoTrump Calls Zelensky ‘P.T. Barnum,’ Says Biden-Era Missiles Were ‘Sold on the Open Market’11 hours agoNew Jersey Deputy Attorney General Charged With Using AI to Create and Share Child Sexual Abuse Material12 hours agoPowder-Filled Letters Hit Election Offices in at Least 15 States and Senate Offices Weeks Before the Midterms16 hours agoArmed Community Member Stopped Oregon School Gunman Within Minutes. Even CNN Said ‘Thank God for That Person.’2 hours agoLifelong Democrat Sheriff Quits the Party After Locals Told Him to Leave for Backing Rogers and James2 hours agoTaco Bell Coworker’s Tip Stopped a Self-Described Neo-Nazi’s Alleged Plot Against an Aurora Hindu Temple4 hours agoParalympian Veteran Waited 5 Years for a Wheelchair Lift. She Says Canada Offered Her Assisted Death.4 hours agoGlenview Teen Shot Dead at Home: Sheriff Says Evidence Is There, Cook County Still Won’t Charge5 hours agoRhode Island Ruled Him Incompetent for 23 Years and Let Him Walk. Now a Toddler Was Stabbed in Her Stroller.5 hours agoHistorian Recounts Digging Through a Building Floor on Tarawa to Bring 11 Missing Americans Home5 hours agoHe Says He Refused a DNR for His Wife Five Times. The Hospital Put It on Her Chart Anyway.10 hours agoIDF Kills Hamas Weapons Commander Who Infiltrated Israel on October 711 hours agoTrump Calls Zelensky ‘P.T. Barnum,’ Says Biden-Era Missiles Were ‘Sold on the Open Market’11 hours agoNew Jersey Deputy Attorney General Charged With Using AI to Create and Share Child Sexual Abuse Material12 hours agoPowder-Filled Letters Hit Election Offices in at Least 15 States and Senate Offices Weeks Before the Midterms16 hours agoArmed Community Member Stopped Oregon School Gunman Within Minutes. Even CNN Said ‘Thank God for That Person.’
Gill made an Al Jazeera reporter name her network, then told her to get lost

Photo: Nate Payne / Public domain (source)

Rep. Brandon Gill to Al Jazeera Reporter Pressing ICE Death Claim: ‘You Guys Can Get Lost’

by
M.A. Rothman

By M.A. RothmanSeptember 15, 2026 · 5 min read
𝕏f

Rep. Brandon Gill, a Texas Republican, was approached on Capitol Hill by a reporter with a number about deaths in immigration detention, in an exchange caught on video that spread online on September 15, 2026. Gill refused to engage with the number until she told him who she worked for, and when the answer finally came, it was Al Jazeera English. His response: “You guys can get lost.”

Conservative outlets cheered the clip. A fair-minded viewer could also say the reporter was asking a legitimate question. Both can be true, and the exchange is worth looking at closely, because what Gill demanded is something every reader of the news is entitled to: know who is asking the question.

“I’m sorry, who are you?”

According to transcripts published by WorldNetDaily and Not the Bee, the reporter, Natasha Del Toro, opened with a claim: “More than 50 people have died in ICE custody since Trump took office again.”

Gill did not answer it. Instead he asked, “I’m sorry, who are you?” She gave her name. He asked, “Who are you with?” She answered, “I’m with ‘Fault Lines.'”

That is the name of a program, not a network, and Gill pressed. “‘Fault Lines’? I’m trying to figure out who you are,” he said, asking whether the show was on television. Del Toro asked whether he was “buying time.” Gill replied, “No, I’m asking you who you are.”

Only then did she say, “I’m with Al Jazeera English.”

Gill’s answer, per RedState’s account: “Al Jazeera? No, I don’t have any desire to talk to Al Jazeera.” He added, “I don’t have anything to say to you guys,” and finally, “I’m not talking to you guys at all. Get lost.” WND reported that Del Toro answered that asking questions is a constitutionally protected right and that Gill had no interest in answering.

Who is Fault Lines?

Fault Lines is Al Jazeera English’s documentary strand focused on the United States. Del Toro is not a passerby with a phone. She is the correspondent credited on Crackdown: Deported Under Trump, a Fault Lines film that, according to the Qatar Tribune, won the inaugural Emmy for Outstanding Social Issue Coverage at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards in New York on May 27, 2026. The film is described as documenting what the network calls one of the most sweeping immigration crackdowns in modern U.S. history.

In other words, the reporter questioning Gill about ICE has already produced award-winning work arguing a point of view about ICE. That is her right. But it is also exactly why Gill wanted the name of her employer before he answered a loaded question on camera.

Who pays for Al Jazeera?

This is the heart of it. Al Jazeera is not an ordinary newsroom. In September 2020, the Justice Department determined that AJ+, a unit of the Al Jazeera Media Network, had to register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. According to Al Jazeera’s own report on the letter, the department’s counterintelligence chief, Jay Bratt, said in it that the Qatari government provides Al Jazeera’s funding and appoints its board of directors.

Al Jazeera condemned the order, arguing that hobbling the network had been one of the top conditions of the United Arab Emirates’ blockade against Qatar, and noting that the letter arrived the day before the UAE signed the Abraham Accords. But the underlying finding about who funds the network and who appoints its board came from the U.S. government’s own counterintelligence officials.

So when a member of Congress is approached by a correspondent whose network is, by the U.S. government’s own finding, funded by a foreign government, asking which outlet she represents is not rudeness. It is due diligence.

About that number

Gill never disputed the figure, and fairness requires noting that it is roughly in line with what immigration advocates have documented. Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights reported in June 2026 that 52 people died in ICE custody during the first 500 days of President Trump’s second term, from January 20, 2025, through June 4, 2026. The same report says the detention population grew about 77 percent in the administration’s first year, from about 40,000 to more than 71,000 people.

Those groups argue the death rate rose faster than the population. That is a debate worth having in a hearing room, with the data, with ICE officials present to respond, and with context about who is being detained and why. It is not a debate a congressman is obligated to have in a hallway with a reporter who would not say who sent her until she had been asked several times.

Why Gill keeps doing this

Gill, first elected in 2024, is the youngest Republican in the House and has built a large following on clips of exactly this kind of exchange. According to RedState, he is running to lead Republicans on the House Oversight Committee when Chairman James Comer’s tenure ends, a contest that also includes Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas. In May, Comer named Gill chair of the committee’s Task Force on Defending Constitutional Rights and Exposing Institutional Abuses.

His instinct here was simple and, frankly, correct. Journalists demand transparency from officials every day. The least they can offer in return is a straight answer about who signs their paychecks. A reporter for a domestic network would have said “CBS” or “Fox” in the first breath. Del Toro led with the name of a show most Americans have never heard of.

Americans are free to watch Al Jazeera, and its reporters are free to ask any question they like in the Capitol. Congressmen are equally free to decline. What Gill did was make sure that everyone watching the clip knew whose question it was before deciding what it was worth.

If you want answers from an American congressman, start by answering the first question yourself: who are you working for?

Sources

More from The Rothman Report

Pro-life Democrat sheriff backs Rogers and James, says his own party told him to leaveLifelong Democrat Sheriff Quits the Party After Locals Told Him to Leave for Backing Rogers and JamesA Taco Bell coworker's call stopped an alleged neo-Nazi plot against a Hindu temple.Taco Bell Coworker’s Tip Stopped a Self-Described Neo-Nazi’s Alleged Plot Against an Aurora Hindu TempleShe waited five years for a wheelchair lift. She says Veterans Affairs offered assisted dying.Paralympian Veteran Waited 5 Years for a Wheelchair Lift. She Says Canada Offered Her Assisted Death.