The hospitalization on Tuesday of a journalist after he was pushed to the ground by ICE agents in a New York courthouse is the latest example in a disturbing trend that coincides with the Trump administration’s targeting of people who report on its anti-immigration agenda and on the agents ordered to put it into practice.
An Associated Press report described the scene:
Federal agents grabbed and shoved journalists in a hallway outside a New York City immigration court on Tuesday, sending one to the hospital in the latest clash between authorities enforcing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and members of the public seeking to observe and document their actions. A visual journalist identified as L. Vural Elibol of the Turkish news agency Anadolu hit his head on the floor at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pushed one journalist off a public elevator and shoved another journalist to the floor, according to video and witnesses.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed in a statement to the AP that the agents were “swarmed by agitators and members of the press, which obstructed operations.”
Dean Moses, the amNewYork journalist who was pushed along with Elibol, called that an “absolute falsehood” when he described his experience to MSNBC on Wednesday:
DHS’ disturbingly dismissive response to the incident doesn’t come exactly as a surprise: Trump himself has set the tone, openly fantasizing about journalists being shot and pursuing policies antithetical to a free press.
A violent trend has come into view. Tuesday’s incident follows a report on Sunday from a CBS journalist in Chicago who said an ICE agent fired a pepper ball that exploded on the hood of her car and covered her in chemicals on an otherwise quiet afternoon. The incident is under investigation by the Illinois State Police and the Broadview Police Department. (DHS told CBS in a statement that “No member of the media at CBS or any other outlet was ‘attacked.’ For their safety, we remind members of the media and journalists to exercise caution as they cover these violent riots.”)
The Freedom of the Press Foundation’s press freedom tracker lists multiple reports of violence against journalists — that is, incidents in which law enforcement is alleged to have harmed reporters — related to immigration activities this year. This violence is happening in the wake of recent polling data that shows broad disapproval of the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement of its bigoted mass incarceration and deportation agenda, as it’s pursued by a DHS that has celebrated its mission with white nationalist propaganda.
Writing for MSNBC this week, Oscar Guevara explained his father Mario’s predicament as an immigrant journalist, based in Atlanta, who was nabbed by local police this year at an anti-Trump protest and is now being processed for deportation by ICE.
While Mario Guevara’s arrest and detention by ICE don’t appear to have featured the violence alleged of law enforcement against other journalists, what it does show is that federal agents are working to intimidate and obstruct the press, from attacks on journalists’ civil rights to physical assaults on their bodies.
