Rioters are undoubtedly listening as lawmakers and pundits falsely accuse the Trump administration of ‘disappearing people.’
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look at the real-world consequences of anti-ICE rhetoric in the media, and cover more media misses.
Noem: Inflammatory Rhetoric Endangers ICE Agents
Assaults against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have risen nearly 700 percent from this time last year, the Department of Homeland Security recently told Fox News.
“Some of these Democrat leaders in some of these communities and states are really, really elevating the emotion out there and lying, and putting these officers’ lives in jeopardy,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Fox and Friends.
“They are just upholding the rule of law. . . . It really is unprecedented, this environment that we’re in.”
Violent rioters are undoubtedly listening as Democratic lawmakers and pundits falsely accuse the Trump administration of “disappearing people,” unfairly targeting “brown” people, and putting illegal immigrants into “concentration camps.”
While rioting criminals are ultimately responsible for their own actions, over at mainstream media outlets, reporters are doing everything they can to portray ICE agents as fascist storm troopers, feeding into the paranoid delusions of the administration’s most volatile critics. Becket Adams, writing for NR, identifies a new trend among media outlets: “to report on ICE arrests and deportations in a way that causes maximum reputational damage to the federal agency, while also saying as little as possible (either up front or at all) about the reasons for the arrests and deportations.”
For example: the Cincinnati Enquirer reports: “Cincinnati Children’s chaplain detained by ICE.” Yet, as Adams writes, the headline fails to mention that the former chaplain is an Egyptian national whose asylum status was revoked in December 2024 by the Biden administration – or the fact that the chaplain was flagged on the FBI’s terror watchlist during a background check (though the chaplain maintains that the fingerprints that led to his being flagged are not his.)
And similar examples can be seen elsewhere throughout the mainstream media. From Adams:
We’ve seen the term “Indiana man” used to describe an undocumented 43-year-old Mexican national who was arrested in St. Joseph County, Ind. We’ve seen “Athens man” used to describe the Venezuelan national who murdered University of Georgia student Laken Riley.
It sometimes gets more granular — and more blatantly misleading — than just state affiliation. We’ve even seen the term “Ice Cream Man” used to refer to a 71-year-old Lebanese national who was deported to Beirut from Michigan for alleged war crimes.
There was also “Veteran who has been in U.S. since he was 4 years old faces deportation.” Readers must wait 17 paragraphs before learning that, in 2008, the veteran “opened fire on a house party crowd in Colorado Springs, striking a 19-year-old, who was five months pregnant at the time, in the leg.”
And on cable news, talking heads espouse overheated rhetoric as ICE agents face dangerous conditions on the ground.
A group of armed individuals used fireworks and graffiti to lure ICE agents into a parking lot near a migrant facility in Alvarado, Texas, earlier this month. When officers responded, rioters fired shots, striking one local police officer in the neck. That officer is expected to survive. Ten individuals have been charged in connection with the shooting.
CNN and MSNBC failed to cover the incident at all, according to Mediaite.
In a separate incident last week, violent rioters clashed with federal immigration officers after U.S. Customs and Border Protection raided two Southern California cannabis farms, one of which is now under investigation for child labor violations. The FBI is offering a reward for information about a rioter who is accused of firing a pistol at law enforcement.
Meanwhile, The View co-host Sunny Hostin suggested there will be a “reckoning” for masked ICE agents.
“They don’t show IDs, they’re not dressed appropriately, they’re not flagged, and they’re masked. So, in my world, you mask yourself because you don’t want to be seen . . . because there will be a reckoning for some of the actions that law enforcement — actual law enforcement — have done,” she said.
Hostin said if the agents carried out their responsibilities without wearing masks and “disappearing people from the streets,” people would feel less “endangered.”
Hostin’s comments come as Noem recently warned about a website that exposes the identities of ICE agents. The site, Noem said, has led to direct threats against agents and their families. “They’re talking about kidnapping their families. They’re going after their colleagues,” she said. “It’s extremely dangerous, and the rhetoric has to stop.”
MSNBC contributor Joyce Vance, meanwhile, suggested attacks on masked ICE agents can be legally justified. “Someone might exercise their lawful right of self defense to protect themselves,” she said.
Hostin’s co-host Ana Navarro argued President Trump’s efforts to crackdown on illegal immigration is actually about “making America white again.”
And on CNN, former MSNBC host Tiffany Cross accused the Trump administration of “kidnapping” people and “transporting them to concentration camps.”
When New York Post editor-at-large Kelly Jane Torrance interrupted to say Cross’s comments were “insulting to Jewish Holocaust survivors,” Cross doubled down.
“I think it’s insulting what they’re doing. It is not insulting to the Jewish Holocaust. I find it insulting that you could even fix your mouth to defend this disgusting behavior,” she said.
The inflammatory rhetoric came from sitting lawmakers as well. Representative Jimmy Gomez (D., Calif.) said ICE agents are arresting anyone who is brown and looks like him.
“There is this deep fear that’s building and building and building, because here’s the thing, they are not going after criminals,” Gomez said on CNN. “They’re going after anybody that is brown, that looks like me, that can’t pass as, what they say, as a ‘typical American.’ That’s why you’re getting people who are not undocumented actually arrested. That’s the fear that exists, that anybody, doesn’t matter if you’re a citizen or not, could be arrested and held in detainment for a number of days.”
Media Misses
• The Buffalo News published an editorial cartoon from Adam Zyglis that showed a man wearing a red MAGA hat drowning in floodwaters in Texas while holding a “HELP” sign. The man is also saying, “Gov’t is the problem not the solution.” The cartoon is captioned, “”Historic flash floods have struck Southern Texas, with at least 82 deaths and dozens more missing.”
Backlash to the cartoon led the Buffalo Newspaper Guild to cancel an event supporting local journalism last week. The Guild stood by Zyglis, saying, “We wholly condemn the individuals who have chosen to twist a positive, public event into an attempt to terrorize and silence Zyglis, spread fear among journalists and their supporters, and distort the mission of a free press.”
• Former CNN commentator Angela Rye recently suggested Trump and the GOP stole the 2024 election and that the 2026 midterms might not even happen. “Even if they are going to happen, are they going to cheat like they did, I still feel like they did, in the 2024 election? I don’t have data. I got a gut feeling, but I’m going to tell you about the Black woman and the Holy Ghost. We be spot on.” Her podcast co-host Tiffany Cross agreed that the 2024 election may “require some investigation.”
• David Litt, a former speechwriter for former President Barack Obama, suggests in a new New York Times essay that people should consider reconciling with their conservative family members who they have shunned over politics. He explained that he personally felt a “civic duty” to be rude to his brother-in-law because of the brother-in-law’s support for Joe Rogan and his skepticism over Covid-19 vaccines.
“My frostiness wasn’t personal. It was strategic. Being unfriendly to people who turned down the vaccine felt like the right thing to do. How else could we motivate them to mend their ways?” Litt wrote. But when Litt wanted to take up surfing, he turned to his brother-in-law to teach him. “Matt and I remain very different, yet we’ve reached what is, in today’s America, a radical conclusion: We don’t always approve of each other’s choices, but we like each other,” Litt wrote.