DHS Claims Videotaping ICE Raids Is 'Violence'

[Celerity]

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-09-09-dhs-claims-videotaping-ice-raids-is-violence/



President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims that making and posting videos of ICE agents as they disappear tens of thousands of immigrants from America’s streets, workplaces, and courtrooms without due process is an act of “violence” to be dealt with accordingly. DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin told the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) that “videotaping ICE law enforcement and posting photos and videos of them online is doxing our agents,” and added: “We will prosecute those who illegally harass ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law.”

In one incident, ICE targeted a Georgia-based journalist, Mario Guevara, for videotaping enforcement operations. Guevara has legal work authorization in the U.S., according to his attorneys, and has been held in ICE detention for more than two months. McLaughlin’s statement comes on the heels of a little-noticed press briefing in July where DHS Secretary Kristi Noem stated that “violence” is “anything that threatens [DHS agents] and their safety. It is doxing them. It is videotaping them where they’re at.”

That expansive definition is likely driving the department’s claims of escalating “violence” against ICE agents, which purportedly rose from an alleged 700 percent increase on July 11, to 830 percent four days later, and to 1,000 percent by August 7. When asked by CMD to provide concrete examples of violent assaults on personnel, the DHS spokesperson pointed to an incident of trash dumped on an ICE agent’s lawn and a sign with a profanity directed at an agent by name.

Peter Eliasberg, an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California attorney representing journalists and observers who were attacked and injured by DHS officers in Los Angeles, told CMD that this definition bears “no relationship to what violence actually is. I don’t think there’s any evidence that … there is truth [in] those numbers.”

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