Block Club Chicago (11/25/25): “The federal government defended [their] aggressive tactics by repeatedly lying, deceiving the public and making claims disproven by their own evidence, according to a federal judge’s scathing ruling.”
- In May 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, and DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed to have footage of “members of Congress assaulting our ICE enforcement officers, including body-slamming a female ICE officer.” When presented with video evidence to the contrary, McLaughlin pivoted to “whatever you want to call it.”
- The DHS boldly claimed the department does not target US citizens, and McLaughlin accused news outlets covering such arrests of “shamefully peddling a false narrative.” Pro Publica (10/16/25) found, on the other hand, over 170 citizens had been detained by immigration agents at that point in 2025.
- US District Judge Sara Ellis reviewed extensive evidence of ICE agent behavior in Chicago, including body camera footage, and issued a withering 233-page opinion that documented repeated lies by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) commander Gregory Bovino and the agents working under him:
Overall, after reviewing all the evidence, the court finds that defendants’ widespread misrepresentations call into question everything that defendants say they are doing in their characterization of what is happening at the Broadview facility or out in the streets of the Chicagoland area during law enforcement activities.
And how have US news outlets responded? Last June, FAIR’s Emma Lucia Llano (FAIR.org, 6/20/25) documented how DHS smears against Kilmar Ábrego Garcia, the Maryland man wrongfully deported to El Salvador last March, were dutifully reported by major newspapers—who at the same time regularly omitted commentary from Ábrego Garcia’s legal team that challenged those smears.
More than seven months later, it’s long past time for news coverage to reflect journalists’ knowledge that DHS exaggerates, shares dubious statements and flat-out lies to the press and the public. Instead, we continue to get largely credulous reporting from most major corporate outlets.
‘Fearing for his life’
The only version of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis’ shooting that made it into the New York Times‘ subhead (1/14/26) was DHS’s: “The agent shot a Venezuelan man who was resisting arrest, an official said.”
For instance, last month in Minneapolis, an ICE agent shot Venezuelan immigrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg after a car chase and confrontation; the man was running away when the shots were fired. DHS claimed the agent “fired a defensive shot” as he was “fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals.”
The New York Times (1/14/26) reported it this way: “Federal Agent Shoots Man in Minneapolis, Prompting Tense Protests.” The subhead began: “The agent shot a Venezuelan man who was resisting arrest, an official said.”
After repeating in the lead paragraph that an agent “shot and injured a man in Minneapolis on Wednesday evening, federal officials said,” the paper gave DHS’s McLaughlin the second, third and fourth paragraphs to make claims that the man was in the country illegally; that he “began to resist and violently assault the officer”; that, more precisely, he and two other men “attacked the officer with a snow shovel and a broom handle”; and that the officer “feared for his life and fired shots.”
“The federal government’s narrative could not immediately be verified,” the Times reporters then wrote, after spending the first four paragraphs and a full-screen header referring only to that government narrative.
Unsurprisingly, many aspects of that narrative were flat-out false and others highly dubious. Just a few days later, CNN (1/18/26) reported that multiple videos, including a Facebook livestream from inside the home, “appear to contradict at least some of ICE’s claims about events leading up to the shooting,” including who ICE agents chased and whether the victim was already inside the home when he was shot.
The Minnesota Star Tribune (1/21/26) then reported that unsealed records from the case, including an FBI affidavit, “more closely align with witness accounts” than DHS claims. Sosa-Celis, the man shot by ICE, was not the person ICE initially chased; that was Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, a friend of Sosa-Celis who had purchased a car from the person who was ICE’s actual target.
The DHS arrested another man who it claimed was involved in the incident; though he is not mentioned in the affidavit and has not been charged, he is being held in a detention facility. The affidavit says the agent fired after the men had started running away, which clearly contradicts the DHS claim that he “feared for his life.”
‘Forced to deploy their weapons’
“Clash” (used here by Good Morning America, 10/6/25) is one of corporate media’s favorite words, obscuring who used violence against whom.
In October, CBP agent Charles Exum shot Chicago native Marimar Martinez several times in her car. The DHS accused her of ramming into and boxing in an ICE vehicle, adding that she was “armed with a semiautomatic weapon” and that the agent was “forced to deploy their weapons and fired defensive shots at an armed US citizen.” They arrested Martinez, who had seven gunshot wounds, and another person, charging them with assault, impeding and interfering with federal agents.
CBS News (10/6/25) gave the incident one line on its morning broadcast, reporting the DHS allegations as fact: “In another weekend incident in Chicago, there were shots fired at two drivers who used their cars to block federal agents and ram into officers.”
ABC‘s Good Morning America (10/6/25) threw in a couple of “officials say” modifiers, but gave viewers no suggestion that those officials might not be telling the truth:
On Saturday agents shot and injured 30-year-old Marimar Martinez after federal officials say she and another man used their cars to ram federal vehicles and block them in. DHS says Martinez was armed with a semiautomatic weapon. She was treated for her injuries and is now facing criminal charges.
Both CBS and ABC used the incident to set up reports that Trump would be authorizing deployment of Texas National Guard troops to Chicago to protect federal agents, serving as mouthpieces for the right-wing narrative that it was ICE agents, not citizens, who were under attack in Chicago.
In fact, the government’s case against Martinez quickly fell apart; all charges against Martinez were dropped, and she is now fighting to have evidence, including body camera footage, released. Available video evidence showed that no cars were boxing ICE agents in, and that Martinez did not ram Exum. Her handgun, which she had a concealed carry license for, was holstered at the bottom of her purse (CNN, 11/21/25; CBS, 1/19/26). And Exum, far from fearing for his own life or career, later bragged about his shooting skills in the incident: “I fired five rounds and she had seven holes. Put that in your book, boys,” read a text he wrote.
‘Suffered internal bleeding’
A CBS staffer told the Guardian (1/15/26) that their network’s “internal bleeding” report “felt to many here like we were carrying water for the admin’s justifying of the shooting to keep our access to our sources.”
In one of the most egregious examples of a failure of media skepticism, a full week after ICE officer Jonathan Ross murdered Minneapolis citizen Renee Good, CBS News (1/14/26) ran an “exclusive” report headlined “ICE Agent Who Shot Renee Good Suffered Internal Bleeding, Officials Say.”
Reporters Nicole Sganga and Jennifer Jacobs attributed the “scoop” to two anonymous “US officials briefed on his medical condition.” They quoted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to back up the claim: “The officer was hit by the vehicle. She hit him. He went to the hospital. A doctor did treat him. He has been released.”
CBS did not bother to cross-examine Noem’s statement with the multiple different angles of video evidence provided. No material evidence of Ross’s injury or its extent was reported, nor did CBS indicate any attempt to identify and contact the hospital where Ross was allegedly treated.
The Guardian (1/15/26) reported that many inside CBS objected to the coverage; a medical producer wrote in an internal email that “it would be helpful to ask what type of treatment he received.” A senior vice president, noting that even “a bruise is internal bleeding,” pointed out: “We do know that the ICE agent walked away from the incident—we have that on camera.”
The Guardian added that CBS‘s newly installed top editor, right-wing pundit Bari Weiss, “expressed a high level of interest in the story on an editorial call on Wednesday morning.”
Several other outlets—including ABC, NBC and the New York Times—also covered the claims, albeit less prominently. Those brief mentions, it should be noted, did not include any skepticism beyond lines like the Times‘ (1/14/26): “A Department of Homeland Security official confirmed that the agent had internal bleeding after the encounter but did not specify further or answer detailed questions.” (To “confirm,” per Merriam Webster, is to “remove doubt about by authoritative act or indisputable fact.”)
When corporate media report statements from the DHS at face value and allow them to frame events, they perpetuate and lend credence to false, harmful government narratives. It’s past time for journalists to stop relying on spoon-fed statements from police or government officials as fact.
This post was originally published on FAIR.