When our police bureau chief, Dean Moses, and two other journalists were pushed around by masked ICE agents at Federal Plaza last week, we reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment about the incident.
The response we received was not only full of blatant lies, but it was damn insulting to our intelligence.
Tricia McLaughlin, spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, issued a statement that blamed “agitators and members of the press” for the incident. She claimed that these individuals “obstructed operations,” which involved masked ICE agents arresting a human being she described as “an illegal alien from Peru.”
McLaughlin’s statement was patently false. We witnessed it ourselves at the scene. Video showing the incident that went viral on social media also undermined the lies in the DHS representative’s statement.
The two ICE agents confronted the individual inside a public elevator that was open to the public; there were no posted restrictions on who could be inside the lift. Moses walked inside the elevator when the ICE agents became aggressive and pushed him. Other reporters and photographers outside the elevator, not even inside the car, captured the chaos that unfolded.
If McLaughlin and DHS were looking for “agitators” to blame for the Sept. 30 incident at Federal Plaza, they can look at the ICE agents involved — and themselves in the mirror.
For months, ICE agents — many of them hiding their faces behind masks — have set upon people attending court-mandated hearings at Federal Plaza immigration court. They have made a spectacle of dragging confused people away with little rhyme or reason. They have created scenes of agony in which loved ones of detainees, including young children, are left crying and begging in despair.
As bad as it has been in Federal Plaza lately, it has been worse in places like Illinois, California and Oregon — where ICE agents are tear-gassing and beating protesters and abducting anyone in their sights, including citizens.
What is the point of this overt exertion of force? What good does this serve the American people? How does this make us safer? How does this help Americans trust ICE? How does it not shatter the people’s trust in law enforcement as a whole?
The First Amendment right of the press to report freely must not be infringed. A free press must be able to report the facts as they are, as Moses and other journalists have done at Federal Plaza without prior incident. We will not accept an environment in which ICE and the DHS intimidate and push our reporters around and deprive us of our First Amendment rights.
McLaughlin closed her statement with an appeal: “Again, we are urging the media and politicians to stop fanning the flames of division and stop demonization of law enforcement.” This is gaslighting on steroids.
From what we’ve witnessed at Federal Plaza last week, from what we’re seeing around America today, the only group that must stop “fanning the flames of division and stop demonization of law enforcement” is ICE itself.
