NBC News Takes PROPAGANDA Joy Ride with ICE

We covered the same scenes and terror as NBC News...but only one was gross laundering of fascism.

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As an independent news outlet consistently reporting on-the-ground across the country, it’s rare we can we directly compare our coverage of the nation’s spiral into fascism to a major corporate news network—after all, most of the time, the big networks aren’t covering actually important stories.

But the exception came on Wednesday in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. An NBC News crew that included Senior White House Correspondent Gabe Gutierrez rode along with ICE agents and produced two minutes of nationally televised propaganda for the Trump administration.

We know because we were at one of the same scenes as NBC News was .

Their story featured zero voices of those victimized by ICE, no interviews with activists, a flashy perp walk, a racist rant from the president against Somalis, two soundbites from a federal agent portraying ICE as defenders of America, visually showing ICE pepper spraying random people (without verbally reporting it), and zero acknowledgement of the pain these raids are inflicting on the community.

I reached out to NBC News with a list of questions about their reporting. They have not responded.

The lack of acknowledging the pain might be the most egregious sin. The story contains video of protesters being pepper-sprayed by ICE. However, the voiceover from Gutierrez said, “While in Minnesota, we saw firsthand protesters trying to block federal officers.”

The framing laid all of the blame at the feet of the protesters, made no attempt to explore why the protesters might want to block vehicles, and never acknowledged the use of pepper-spray, which was clearly visible in the video, yet could go unrecognized by laypeople.

Status Coup’s Jon Farina was at this same scene and captured video of one of the same protesters seen in NBC News’ coverage being pepper-sprayed despite not blocking the road. To act as though the brutality was entirely a reaction to the road being blocked was visibly untrue.

Earlier in the story, NBC showed agents bashing in the door to a house to capture someone allegedly in the country illegally who had a history of “criminal sexual conduct.” The agents did not find the person they were looking for, but that didn’t stop them from perp-walking another man who was arrested in the home for allegedly being undocumented.

Tellingly, NBC News blurred the face of a federal agent escorting the man—but not the face of the person being accused. Someone half paying attention while eating dinner or scrolling on their phone might not recognize that the federal agents missed the person they wanted to take, and think the person shown on screen committed “criminal sexual conduct.”

Even worse, five times in the piece, NBC News attributed information to ICE, or the Department of Homeland Security, implying journalists never verified the claims. This was done through the verbal technique of "ICE says.”

TRANSLATED: the Trump regime says, but we don’t have the time or desire to verify if it’s true or not, so you figure it out. Or more simply put: willfully advancing the administration’s narrative (for the sake of a ride-along).

In the middle of the story, Gutierrez diverges from discussing the Minnesota ICE operations to recap a wholly separate federal investigation that resulted in charges against a few dozen Somalis—most of whom are U.S. citizens—living in Minneapolis. Those people were charged with defrauding government programs. President Donald Trump seized on the investigation to make racist remarks against the entire Somali community in Minnesota—a group of more than 75,000 people.

The NBC News story included some of Trump’s comments but never explained why this is relevant to the ICE operations, especially since Gutierrez said, “ICE insists the large Somali population here is not the specific target.”

So why the hell are we talking about it? News junkies know that ICE is likely responding to Trump’s desires to otherize the Somali community. This would be an excellent time to hear from a member of the Somali community about their feelings about the ICE operations. Instead, NBC News plays a soundbite from the week before of a local Imam decrying painting the entire community with a broad brush.

The president’s comments are never acknowledged as racist or directly challenged.

While Jon Farina, Andrew Mercado of Mercado Media, and I have spent a week monitoring signal group chats, endlessly pursuing leads, and lifting up the voices of those brave enough to resist the occupation of their city, NBC News parachuted in and went along with ICE agents for a propaganda ride for few hours.

This is a case study in the failures and complicity of the corporate press.