Beyond Corporate Media, Journalists Are Stepping Up and Speaking Up About ICE
Janine Jackson
CBS News (1/24/26) does not mean to imply that Alex Pretti's death had anything to do with a shooting that coincidentally involved immigration agents.
As millions around the world, fresh off watching real-time footage of federal law enforcement murdering Renee Good, saw federal agents murder Alex Pretti, CBS viewers got a headline (1/24/26): “Person Dead After Shooting in Minneapolis Involving Federal Immigration Agents.”
You can check your calendar; it is 2026. And yet corporate media still think we’ll fall for that passive voice business, wherein law enforcement are…there…and people just kinda die.
Or we get—as CBS (1/27/26) offered elsewhere—“videos of the incident appear to contradict officials' claims.”
'No hate, no fear'
“Every time this country has had a debate on the sustainability and expansion of our democracy," Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates told Workday (1/23/26), "workers have settled that debate—and I’m looking for workers to do the same thing this time.”
It’s not clear whether corporate media know they’re writing themselves a resignation letter, but they are. Fortunately, there are other outlets ready to step up and speak up.
You can read Hammer & Hope (Fall/24) for an interview with Doran Schrantz, a longtime organizer of Minnesota’s faith-based communities on "How a Decade of Multiracial, Interfaith Organizing in Minnesota Undergirds the Resistance." Schrantz explains:
We built a strategy together around how we understand what it means to unequivocally be East African and Muslim. Or rural with a rural perspective. No one’s asking you to change any of those things. We are explicitly posing the question about how we can publicly demonstrate, over and over again, the critical importance of multiracial democratic power. We center this question partially to model, but partially to protect our movements from being distracted and divided by identitarian or weaponized racialized attacks.
You can read Sarah Lazare writing for Workday Magazine (1/23/26) and In These Times (1/23/26) about Minnesota’s January 23 strike and shutdown. Tens of thousands marched through downtown Minneapolis shouting, “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.”
That action crucially involved workers and unions. A union leader from SEIU Local 26, which represents more than 8,000 of Minnesota’s janitors, window cleaners and property service workers told Lazare they’ve "lost over 20 members to these abductions by federal agents, often without warning, often without due process.”
You can read Katya Schwenk at the Lever (8/28/25), who details how ICE has been allowed to swallow more and more resources based on a broad authority that Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security to reshuffle funds with little oversight.
The latest is DHS draining money from FEMA, tasked with disaster relief but lately wielded as a political cudgel, as when Trump floated the idea that he would deny relief to states that allowed consumers to ban Israeli products. Once an independent agency, FEMA was subsumed into DHS in 2003 as part of George W. Bush’s post-9/11 reorganization.
Congress has repeatedly given DHS authority to move money around in a way not afforded to all departments, who have to trouble with things like approval from lawmakers.
Switching names not changing course
"What is motivating all of the reporting on Trump’s 'pivot'?” Popular Information (1/28/26) asked. "Trump softened his rhetoric, calling Pretti’s death 'very unfortunate' and 'very sad.'"
You can read Popular Information (1/28/26), which warns of media disinformation around a supposed Trump “pivot” on ICE actions in Minnesota. For instance, AP (1/27/26) reports that Trump has “shifted toward a more conciliatory approach,” that this is an “about face.” The New York Times (1/26/26) ran a headline declaring “Trump Changes Course in Minnesota.” Except that switching names at the top—Homan for Bovino, or anyone for Noem—is actually not proof that the violent crackdown in Minneapolis won’t continue indefinitely.
Popular Information also breaks down, for those interested, the weak corporate response to citizens’ murder by the state. Conspicuously silent after Renee Good’s killing, large companies in Minnesota evidently felt moved to address the issue after Alex Pretti. The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce released a letter on behalf of more than 60 CEOs based in the state that consisted of 215 words that said next to nothing.
“With yesterday’s tragic news, we are calling for an immediate deescalation of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions,” the CEOs wrote, with no thoughts on how tensions could be deescalated or what a real solution would look like.
Popular Information contacted all 68 companies that signed the letter, asking: “Do you condemn the killing of two Minnesotans by federal officers?” All either declined to comment or to respond at all.
'Not our first rodeo'
“They [constitutional observers] are the ones keeping watch,” Immigrant Defense Network’s Edwin Torres Desantiago told Sahan (1/28/26). “They’re the ones that are making sure our constitution is upheld."
You can read, at the Guardian (1/20/26), Alyssa Oursler’s notes on just how grassroots networks in the Twin Cities, with things like community watch and mutual aid, are building on work honed in the 2020 protests in response to George Floyd’s state sanctioned murder. As Oursler quotes one rapid response organizer, “This is not our first rodeo.”
Another aid worker is cited: “We’ve always had to do it ourselves. We have whistles and we have organizing. That’s all we have against people with huge trucks and guns.”
And you can stay in touch with reporting from Minnesotan journalists, like those at Sahan Journal, a nonprofit digital newsroom focused on the state’s immigrants and communities of color, offering reports along the lines of "Bravery in the Face of Fear: Immigrant Defense Network Goes Statewide With Constitutional Observer Training" (1/28/26).
There have been creditable Big Media reports on Minneapolis, but just as events have shown us the need for a disruptive new way forward in politics, they've shown up the failures of so-called legacy media to confront the moment, and the value of citizen journalism that doesn’t pretend to come from nowhere, but instead centers the people at the sharp end of the policies crafted by the forces to whom corporate media give pride of place.
Support your local and independent journalists, is what I’m trying to say.
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