Journalists targeted in Trump's ICE crackdown, facing arrests and deportations

Minneapolis was under siege. Hundreds of federal agents in masks and body armor moved through the streets in what had become a routine show of force—the Trump administration's immigration enforcement operation at full throttle. John Abernathy, an independent photographer, was there doing what photographers do: documenting the daily protests that had erupted in response. He was capturing the moment when ICE agents tackled him to the ground. In the photograph that followed, pepper spray streaked down his face. He had managed, in those seconds before impact, to toss his camera to another photographer nearby. The image mattered more than his safety. "It deserves to be seen, what's going on around here," he would later say.

Abernathy's assault was not an isolated incident. The US Press Freedom Tracker recorded 32 arrests of journalists in 2025 and 170 assaults, the vast majority occurring at protests. The year 2026 has brought no improvement. What made Abernathy's case particularly stark was that it illustrated a broader vulnerability: journalists were not exempt from the machinery of enforcement. They could be tackled, sprayed, arrested like anyone else.

But the targeting went deeper than street-level confrontations. Immigrant journalists themselves became subjects of the crackdown. Estefany Rodríguez, a Colombian reporter covering immigration for a Spanish-language outlet in Nashville, was arrested in March after reporting on immigration arrests at a local courthouse. ICE agents surrounded her car—marked with her outlet's logo—and took her into custody. She spent two weeks in detention centers in Louisiana and Alabama before a judge ordered her release. The timing was not coincidental. She had filed her story the day before agents found her.

In Georgia, Mario Guevara, an Emmy award-winning journalist from El Salvador who had lived in Atlanta for nearly two decades, was arrested in June 2025 while covering a protest. Guevara had built an independent Spanish-language outlet and documented immigration enforcement operations on TikTok, making his work visible to thousands. He spent more than 100 days in detention, most of it in isolation. "They didn't want me to hear the stories of other fellow prisoners and that's why they locked me up alone," he told Forbidden Stories, the international journalism organization that coordinated an investigation into these cases. In October, he was deported to El Salvador. His wife and children remained in the United States. From exile, Guevara has continued reporting on US immigration enforcement and remains convinced his journalism was the reason for his removal. "ICE had a personal campaign against me," he said. Agents had repeatedly questioned why he documented their activities when he was not a US citizen. "ICE arrested and deported me because of my journalistic work, I'm sure."

The Department of Homeland Security disputed this account. A spokesperson rejected Guevara's claims as "completely FALSE," stating instead that he was arrested by local authorities for obstruction of law enforcement and deported because an immigration judge had issued a removal order more than a decade earlier. "If you come to our country and break our laws, we will arrest you and you will NEVER return," the spokesperson said. The competing narratives—Guevara's account of targeting, the government's insistence on routine enforcement—remain unresolved.

The investigation that brought these cases together involved staff from two dozen newsrooms across 16 countries, coordinated by Forbidden Stories. It exposed not only the arrests and detentions of journalists in the United States but also the hostility they faced abroad. The Trump administration had negotiated third-country deportation deals with nations mostly in Africa and Latin America, sending deportees to countries that were not their origin nations. Journalists investigating these arrangements encountered resistance from foreign governments eager to keep the arrangements quiet.

In Yaoundé, Cameroon, four journalists—three of them on assignment for the Associated Press—were detained in February while reporting at a state-run compound where African migrants recently deported from the US were being held. They were accused of criminal trespassing. Their equipment and phones were confiscated for a week. During questioning, authorities warned them they would be "crushed" and "disappear[ed] without a trace." Nalova Akua, one of the detained journalists, believed they had been targeted because they were exposing a collaboration between Cameroon and the US government that officials preferred to keep hidden. The message was clear: reporting on these arrangements carried real risk, even for journalists working for major international outlets.

What emerged from these cases was a portrait of a press climate grown hostile and unpredictable. Journalists could be arrested at protests. Immigrant journalists could be detained and deported. Foreign governments could threaten those investigating US policy. The machinery of enforcement did not distinguish between immigrants and citizens, between protesters and documentarians. A camera tossed to safety, a photograph of pepper spray, a reporter separated from her family—these were the textures of a changing landscape for those trying to report on what was happening.