Rash: Citizen journalists are holding ICE accountable via video

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The nation’s debate over deportation policies is playing out on the streets — and screens.

Among the kaleidoscope of competing images of immigration enforcement is a social-media post on X echoing the video game “Halo.” The graphic is matched with this all-caps message: “DESTROY THE FLOOD,” followed by “JOIN.ICE.GOV.”

The post, which to its detractors doesn’t exactly evoke the ethos of “halo,” was from the Department of Homeland Security, which added this statement: “Finishing this fight.”

But the fight — involving undocumented residents and also often U.S. citizens caught up in raids — is far from finished. And among the weapons deployed are videos offering competing narratives. From the Trump administration, there are slickly produced messages, especially for recruitment and a profile of the “Worst of the Worst” detainees, made possible in part by big budgets from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. And from opponents, opposite of the professionally produced videos are amateur cameras capturing chaos from raids and protests.

These include cellphone videos from citizens witnessing people whisked away by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as well as hostile confrontations between the agents and those protesting the sweeps. The scores of recordings are individually powerful but also can collectively capture a story, as they did in the New York Times’ recent report “How Trump’s Chicago Immigration Crackdown Escalated, in 10 Videos.”

To date, Minneapolis and St. Paul haven’t had commensurate enforcement focus from the federal government. But local organizations, including the ACLU of Minnesota, are alert to the possibility.

“Certainly, the Trump administration is trying to intimidate people; fear is a powerful tool,” said Alicia Granse, an ACLU of Minnesota attorney. “I’m not going to tell people not to be worried, but fear is a tactic used by authoritarians, and we just need to be vigilant.”

The administration, added Granse, “has demonstrated that it is willing to use whatever tactics necessary to intimidate, and everybody has to know their own limit for engaging with that.”

Vigilance via video “sheds light on things the government wants to hide, and it’s absolutely vital that citizens and journalists are able to continue to document those things,” said Granse, whose organization’s website lists specific rights for photographing or filming in public.

These include: “When lawfully present in any public space, you have the right to photograph anything in plain view, including federal buildings and police; On private property, the property owner may set rules about photography and video; Police may not confiscate or demand to view photographs or video without a warrant, nor may they delete data under any circumstances; Police may order citizens to cease activities, including recording, that are truly interfering with legitimate law enforcement operations.”

Granse is clear in communicating that those in law enforcement “absolutely have the same rights as we all do.” Heeding this helps keep citizen observation peaceful, which is in everyone’s best interest.

Putting this modern moment in historical context, Christopher Terry, an associate professor and Cowles fellow of Journalism, Law and Policy at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism, said that “what you have, for potentially the first real time in American history, is citizen journalism of the kind that the Founding Fathers always imagined as a check on government.”

The Founding Fathers, however, probably could never have imagined fragmentation of media — and of society — that today’s technological transformations make possible. Indeed, even current readers of a certain age couldn’t.

“There was a time when we all agreed on what was going on,” said Terry, who added that common knowledge didn’t necessarily create consensus but a “range of discussion” that had relative boundaries. But now, “we exist in such a diverse media environment and have no contact with other points of view. That’s what’s winnowed people into these schools of different areas; there’s so much more media that we don’t have that common collective experience anymore.”

That’s certainly true regarding today’s split screen between government messaging, amplified by like-minded conservative-media (including social channels) supporters and an often-separate media ecosystem (and echo chamber) of those documenting and decrying ICE tactics.