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'Kristi Noem Is Actually Claiming Videotaping DHS Officers Is Violent': Janine Jackson ([link removed])


Janine Jackson interviewed writer and researcher Matthew Cunningham-Cook about criminalizing witness for the September 19, 2025, episode ([link removed]) of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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Truthout: DHS Says Filming, Posting Videos of ICE Agents Is “Doxxing,” Vows Prosecutions

Truthout (9/10/25 ([link removed]) )

Janine Jackson: Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem, nominally a public official in what is nominally a democracy, has declared ([link removed]) that recording the actions of ICE agents, nominally public officials in what is nominally a democracy, constitutes violence. And the department seeks to “prosecute those who illegally harass ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law.”

Suggesting respect for the "extent of the law" is perhaps the funniest part of that statement, as the White House is clearly scrambling to present masked men attacking people on the street, and disappearing them with no legal process, as somehow fitting within the law as any reasonable person would recognize it.

Matthew Cunningham-Cook is a writer and researcher working with the Center for Media and Democracy ([link removed]) . He joins us now by phone from Costa Rica. Welcome back ([link removed]) to CounterSpin, Matthew Cunningham-Cook.

Matthew Cunningham-Cook: Thanks for having me on, Janine. I appreciate it.

JJ: Noem says videotaping ICE agents is “illegally doxxing” ([link removed]) them, even as JD Vance is saying ([link removed]) everyone should call the employer of anybody who posts anything short of praise for Charlie Kirk online.

It's not good for the brain to try to parse the rhetoric of this administration, to try to make their language make what we understand as sense. As with Charlie Kirk, language for them is not a shared understanding; it's just another tool to push the actions they seek to carry out. And, frankly, to make people think they're stupid, that they don't understand what rights they have, much less how to defend them.

But as we record in September 2025, we do have rights, and as courts have affirmed, and legal scholars you spoke with explained, that includes people having the right to publicly record law enforcement, does it not?
CMD: DHS Says Making and Posting Videos of ICE Agents is “Violence”

Exposed by CMD (9/9/25)

MCC: Yeah, it's a foundational right. The Supreme Court has upheld it time and time again ([link removed] Amicus Brief TRI.PDF) . But it makes law enforcement very uncomfortable. For an administration that is deeply committed to crafting its own narrative of what they're doing, it's very threatening. And so they're interested in crafting a legal argument that states that it's actually "doxxing" to videotape DHS officers, or to find out who they are. And, again, this is just so wildly against basic understandings of what our Constitution means.

JJ: We keep hearing that it's “interfering” in their actions, that you can record as long as you don't interfere in their actions. But then, as you report, some states are sort of suggesting, well, if you get anywhere near them, that's interfering. And at a certain point, it means you really don't have the ability to witness their actions at all.

MCC: Yeah. And to be clear, yeah, that's for state and local law enforcement, that they're just saying ([link removed]) , “Oh, you need to step away.” Kristi Noem is actually claiming, identifying DHS officers and videotaping them is violent. It's illegal. You should be prosecuted for it.

And one of the most positive things that's happening these days is grand juries are not indicting people ([link removed]) on these ridiculous charges. So the most extreme Trump-appointed federal prosecutors are really having a difficult time getting indictments, when the history is a grand jury will “indict a ham sandwich ([link removed]) .” So that's a step forward. But I think the administration is still deploying arguments that are exceedingly dangerous, for sure.
Trash dumped on an ICE agent's lawn.

Trash dumped on an ICE agent's lawn. "Prominent politicians are actively encouraging these attacks by demonizing federal law enforcement," a DHS press release (7/11/25 ([link removed]) ) complained.

JJ: One point that you have noted is that once you hear this top-down definition that just recording ICE agents—and I appreciate the distinction between state and local law enforcement, and what Noem is saying—but once you accept that videotaping ICE agents is violence, then maybe you need to look again at the DHS’s claims ([link removed]) that there's “escalating violence” against agents, right? We ought to reinterpret that in light of that.

MCC: Yeah, the numbers are constantly shifting. They're refusing to provide basic information about what this supposed increase in violence against DHS officers means or represents, or is actually true. And then the kind of examples they've given are an ICE officer had a bunch of trash dumped on their lawn, with a sign that said “F__ this ICE officer” by name. That might be littering or trespassing, but that's not violence. So it's a very different thing.

So, again, I think if those are the concrete examples that the administration is pointing to, then I think that we have a lot of reasons to be very skeptical of their claims that there's some kind of dramatic uptick in violence against ICE and DHS officers.

JJ: It's kind of like looking in a funhouse mirror, because our lyin' eyes, evidently, are telling us that there actually is violence happening ([link removed]) , and it's against reporters, and other witnesses. We do have knowledge of that, right?

MCC: Yep, absolutely. And against the people they're going after.

JJ: Yeah.

MCC: And putting people in four-point restraints, or forcing people to be in detention camps where there's no access to clean water or sanitation, how is that not violence? But, again, the administration doesn't see people who are on the receiving end of immigration enforcement as possibly being impacted by their violent actions; they think that people deserve it.
Rolling Stone: Lawsuit Against DHS Reveals Pattern of Excessive Force Against Journalists

Rolling Stone (8/19/25 ([link removed]) )

JJ: So it's not even violence if it's aimed in the right direction.

I'm going to ask you about media in a second, but you did just refer to grand juries refusing to indict, and we have seen other developments, like you wrote about ([link removed]) the LA District Court judge who offered an injunction barring DHS officers from dispersing and threatening or assaulting journalists and legal observers. So there is pushback, there is resistance, to this oppressive effort from the White House, right?

MCC: Yeah, yeah. No, it's definitely a step forward that the judge decided to issue a preliminary injunction. But I think there's real risks. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has historically been the least right-wing federal appeals court, has really made some terrible decisions ([link removed]) , clearly just trying to kowtow to the right-wing Supreme Court. So I think that there's a real risk that that injunction will either be overturned, or not be able to be meaningfully enforced, because appeals court judges and the Supreme Court are so deferential to the administration.

JJ: And I just saw some information ([link removed]) about, and I won't have the specifics, but a person who was charged with writing pro-Palestinian graffiti, and the jury said, “This is vandalism. He should get probation.” But the judge said, “You know what? I'm going to put him in jail. I'm going to overrule what you've said and put him in jail.” So the law has many points of entry, and we can't relax just because one judge says something that seems supportive.
Matthew Cunningham-Cook

Matthew Cunningham-Cook: "It's an extremely dangerous time for the free press, and it's critically important that journalists not be kowtowing to this administration."

Let me ask you, finally, you've been a reporter for many years. This is a story where language matters so much, where if you just accept someone like Noem’s statement that recording an ICE agent is violence, and we know that "violence" is going to slip into "terrorism" tomorrow, if it hasn't already, and then all of that legal weight will be brought to bear, and it matters very much who you believe, and what you think the law actually is, and who your sources are. So I would just ask you, finally, what you generally make of news media coverage, what it is doing, what it could do and should do on this set of critically, crucially important issues?

MCC: Yeah, I'd start with saying every journalist and member of the public should listen to Toni Morrison's Nobel Lecture ([link removed] old woman%2C blessed with,is to be a man.) , where she says language is agency. It's an act with consequences. And that's one of my first things that comes to mind, with the funhouse mirror world that we're living in with this administration.

But I think, yeah, it's an extremely dangerous time for the free press, and it's critically important that journalists not be kowtowing to this administration, not prostrate themselves, even if that's what their bosses want them to. CBS: Now is the time to put up or shut up, keep doing your job until they have to fire you. And then if they fire you, fight back and go on strike. This administration needs reporters to step up and actually report on what's going on.

JJ: Leave it all on the field, if you will. I appreciate that.

We've been speaking with investigative journalist Matthew Cunningham-Cook. His work on this issue is up at ExposedByCMD.org ([link removed]) , as well as at the American Prospect ([link removed]) and Rolling Stone ([link removed]) , and no doubt other outlets. Matthew Cunningham-Cook, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

MCC: Thanks so much, Janine. I appreciate it.
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