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.”

snip

[Walleye]

1. These people are ruining the English language as much as they pretend to love it

Violence is violence war is war. We’re not all stupid. An emergency is a clear and present danger, not some vague paranoia

[The Wizard]

2. Dissembling is in their DNA. (NT)

[Torchlight]

3. Recording masked agents carrying out state sanctioned purges against non-whites is now violence

and someone, somewhere is going pretend offense when Gestapo-tactics are called out as such. Masks or swastikas... six of one, half a dozen of the other

[allegorical oracle]

4. Recordings of violence are evidence. People who are breaking the law don't

like evidence. Just ask the police who beat up Rodney King and George Floyd.

[newdeal2]

5. They are not going to like the new AI glasses coming out

Can record everything you see without anyone really noticing.

[Heidi]

6. Snowflakes

and crybabies.

[dalton99a]

7. And cowards.

[Heidi]

8. Yup! It's a thug trifecta.