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Communities across the U.S. are facing escalating threats from immigration enforcement operations, with federal agents moving from city to city, detaining children and community members, tear-gassing neighborhoods, attacking protesters, and even murdering people observing and filming them.
Journalists aren’t immune from the dangers. Reporters are facing harassment, arrest, and physical attacks simply for doing their jobs, all while battling pervasive government secrecy.
In a recent discussion hosted by Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), four journalists reporting from the front lines in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Portland, Oregon, shared hard-earned lessons on staying safe, verifying information, building trust with sources, and keeping the public informed.
Journalist Memo Torres from L.A. Taco described how he and his colleagues responded to Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that began in Los Angeles in June 2025 by starting the Daily Memo, a daily video recap of immigration enforcement actions often created from information, records, and pictures sent in by community members and verified by the outlet’s reporters.
Those community relationships, Torres explained, are essential. Relationships that Torres has built with sources, especially in groups organized to respond to ICE raids, have been key to verifying the videos and tips he receives, he said. “Find those people in your community, find the rapid response groups, the leaders, and try to build relationships with them,” Torres recommended. “It’s so important to be tapped into the ground.”
Echoing that point, journalist Francia García Hernández, who reports for the hyperlocal news outlet Block Club Chicago, agreed with the need to connect with sources in impacted communities, and encouraged journalists to also report on the ways they’re resisting government overreach. “I think one of the biggest misconceptions about immigration is that it’s just stories about enforcement and how families or communities are torn apart.” García Hernández said, “But there’s a lot of resistance. There’s a history of organizing that also needs to be documented and told.”
When the conversation turned to protest coverage, independent reporter Kevin Foster, who is based in Portland, Oregon, emphasized that situational awareness and proper safety equipment are key. Foster recounted incidents of officers tear-gassing large crowds at protests, including journalists, and of journalists being “kettled and arrested and batoned.” Other times, he noted, protests can be peaceful. “It really is quite dynamic,” Foster said, adding, “I think you just have to be prepared to handle that.”
Independent journalist and documentary filmmaker Michael Nigro encouraged journalists to show an “unadulterated reality” that he said is necessary for democratic accountability, and to not accept measures from the government that block transparency. Nigro recounted the making of his film “ICED Out of America,” which documented masked federal officers arresting and disappearing immigrants attending mandatory asylum court hearings held in a federal building in New York City. “Don’t let these masked agents become the new normal,” Nigro cautioned. “Don’t become complacent in seeing that.”
Watch the whole conversation here.
Dear Friend of Press Freedom,
Attacks on well-known journalists like Don Lemon are in the headlines, but noncitizens exercising First Amendment rights remain the most vulnerable. Rümeysa Öztürk has been facing deportation for 318 days for co-writing an op-ed the government didn’t like, and journalist Ya’akub Vijandre remains locked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement over social media posts about issues he reported on. Read on for more on the state of press freedom.
The Department of Homeland Security secretary calls leakers a threat to national security and wants to prosecute them. Federal agents raided Washington Post journalist Hannah Natanson’s home and seized terabytes of data, purportedly to aid their prosecution of leaks.
But much of what the public knows about government agencies like DHS, which includes ICE and Customs and Border Protection, is thanks to whistleblowers and leakers who have exposed the government’s increasingly unlawful conduct as it aggressively enforces immigration law across the country.
Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Senior Adviser Caitlin Vogus wrote about a few recent examples.
The public’s outrage about attacks on the First Amendment like Don Lemon’s arrest and, before that, the censorship of Jimmy Kimmel isn’t because everyone protesting is a member of their fan clubs. It’s because people genuinely care about free speech, but with everything else going on, sometimes it takes a celebrity name to get their attention.
That’s why it’s important to keep the outrageous arrests of Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort in the news and not let the moment pass. We’re doing our part. Our executive director, Trevor Timm, spoke at the National Association of Black Journalists’ town hall about the arrests. Our chief of advocacy, Seth Stern, wrote for The Guardian and told everyone from CNN to MeidasTouch to legal podcasts and radio shows about how the charges are both legally frivolous and an obviously retaliatory political stunt to intimidate journalists.
Last summer, Shirley L. Smith, an independent investigative journalist from the U.S. Virgin Islands, reached out about her efforts to get lawmakers there to modernize the territory’s public records laws.
Our response was something like, “Where have you been all our lives?” We’ve spent years imploring journalists to advocate for their own legal rights. No matter what one thinks about the place of “objectivity” in contemporary journalism, there’s no need for reporters to let it get in the way of advocating for their own ability to do their jobs.
We spoke to Smith about her campaign for transparency.
Days before the federal government falsely claimed cellphone-brandishing nurse Alex Pretti was a terrorist plotting a “massacre,” a jury in Chicago acquitted Juan Espinoza Martinez on bogus charges of a murder-for-hire plot against then-Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino.
Stern wrote for The Intercept about a recently unsealed court transcript that shows the government used that case as a pretext to convince a judge to obscure an ICE agent’s face during a public court proceeding when his name, face, employment, and location were publicly listed on his LinkedIn page.
Last May, a classified whistleblower complaint alleged misconduct by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and another unnamed federal agency.
The whistleblower should be allowed to share their complaint with Congress. But that’s not what happened. Our Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy, Lauren Harper, has more on how Gabbard, a one-time advocate for whistleblowers, is dodging transparency.
What we're reading U.S. failed to alert judge to press law in application to search reporter’s home The New York TimesIf the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 is going to stop these abuses, Congress must amend it to require that evidence gathered by breaking it is immediately thrown out.
FBI couldn’t get into WaPo reporter’s iPhone because it had lockdown mode enabled 404 MediaIf you’re an iPhone user who is at elevated risk, enable Lockdown Mode. If you are an Android user, enable Advanced Protection. Read more tips in FPF’s 2026 journalist’s digisec checklist.
FBI spied on Washington Post reporter prior to raiding their home The DissenterThe threat to press freedom from this case goes beyond seizing devices. The government shouldn’t be physically surveilling journalists.
How to film ICE WiredThe best defense against ICE seizing your camera “is other people recording that action and then being able to use that footage as evidence in court, when you sue them,” said FPF’s Timm.
ICE knocks on ad tech’s data door to see what it knows about you The RegisterICE wants to buy data from online ads to spy on people. Time to pass the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act.
FAA’s mobile no-drone zones create First Amendment concerns QuillThe Federal Aviation Administration’s new no-drone zones are “mind-boggling,” FPF’s Deputy Director of Advocacy Adam Rose said.
Too many FOIA requests, too little transparency Columbia Journalism Review“The big, systematic problems in FOIA predate the Trump administration,” FPF’s Lauren Harper said. “I think it’s fair to say that the Trump administration is making it a hell of a lot worse.”
Lenexa police investigated author of column criticizing the department. He's ‘pissed off’ KCURWriting op-eds is not a crime. Someone should tell police in Lenexa, Kansas, and suggest they read the First Amendment.
We spoke to four journalists covering immigration enforcement across the country. Watch our conversation to learn more about reporting on protests and raids, cultivating sources, and reaching the public. Watch the discussion here:
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