Journalists Covering U.S. Immigration Enforcement Face Arrest and Assault
Independent photographer John Abernathy was tackled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents while documenting a protest in Minneapolis, and was photographed on the ground with pepper spray running down his face.
ICE is the federal agency that carries out immigration arrests and deportations. Abernathy's case is one of several involving journalists who cover immigration enforcement. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker reported 32 arrests and 170 assaults of journalists in the United States in 2025, most of them during protests, according to The Guardian.
Estefany Rodríguez, a Colombian reporter who covers immigration for a Spanish-language outlet in Nashville, Tennessee, was arrested in March. She was held in ICE detention centers in Louisiana and Alabama for two weeks before a judge ordered her release. A day before her arrest, she had reported on immigration arrests at a local courthouse. Agents then surrounded her car, which was marked with her outlet's logo, and arrested her. The Committee to Protect Journalists had reported she was detained without warrant on March 4, according to CPJ.
Mario Guevara, an Emmy award-winning journalist from El Salvador, lived in Atlanta for nearly two decades and ran an independent Spanish-language outlet. He documented immigration enforcement operations on TikTok. He was arrested while covering a "No Kings" protest in June 2025. He spent more than 100 days in detention, mostly in isolation. He was deported to El Salvador last October while his wife and children remain in the U.S. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said allegations that Guevara was arrested by ICE or isolated in detention because he is a journalist are "completely FALSE".
Abernathy's detention on Jan. 15, 2026, while documenting protests in Fort Snelling, Minnesota, was recorded in detail by the Tracker. He arrived at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building at around noon to document a veteran-led protest against the federal immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities area, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. The building was used as a base for federal officers. The protest followed an ICE officer fatally shooting Renee Good during an operation on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis.
Abernathy told the Tracker the officers at the protest included agents from Border Patrol, ICE and the Bureau of Prisons. He said he was shot twice with pepper bullets while documenting the protest. Pepper bullets are projectiles that release an irritant powder. He said at least two agents were on top of him and accused him of bear-spraying the crowd. He denied it. He said agents set off a tear gas canister very close to him while he was pinned facedown, leaving him unable to breathe and gagging. He was detained and ultimately arrested by federal officers.
Other detentions connected to Minnesota protest coverage include former CNN anchor and freelance journalist Don Lemon and Emmy-winning local journalist Georgia Fort. CPJ condemned their arrests over Minnesota protest coverage, according to CPJ. Lemon was arrested and charged over covering a Minnesota church protest. DHS later announced the arrests of three ringleaders of the St. Paul church riot on federal crimes charges, identifying them as Nekima Levy Armstrong, Chauntyll Louisa Allen and William Kelly.
DHS states that it has arrested and deported hundreds of thousands of criminal illegal aliens across the country. On Sept. 18, 2026, it listed a press release titled "WORST OF THE WORST: ICE Arrests Pedophiles, Rapists, and Violent Assailants."
The enforcement campaign has drawn close investigative attention. Forbidden Stories coordinated a multi-outlet investigation involving staff from two dozen newsrooms in 16 countries detailing secretive Trump administration deals with third countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America, to take in deportees. Reuters was named a finalist for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography for coverage of Trump's immigration crackdown.
The broader context here is a collision between two operational logics. Immigration authorities are conducting high-visibility enforcement with federal personnel deployed around courthouses, protests and places of worship. Journalists, particularly Spanish-language and independent reporters with deep source networks in immigrant communities, are positioned close to those operations. In my view, that proximity explains why the docket now includes both use-of-force incidents at protests and longer immigration-detention cases that test the boundary between enforcement discretion and press protection.
