In days since a masked federal agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, right-wing creators and activists like Nick Sortor and Cam Higby descended on Minneapolis, protesters filmed and interviewed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. So far, they’ve produced a steady stream of content that seems designed to paint Minneapolis as a lawless city, and the actions of ICE agents like Jonathan Ross, who reportedly shot and killed Good, as self-defense.
“OH YES! ICE just smashed a leftist activist’s car window and got them out after disrupting ICE operations in Minneapolis. MORE OF THIS!” Sortor posted on X on Sunday, “Results should be STEEP!”
These creators focused their content on protesters using their vehicles and blocking traffic to stop ICE from operating. In one video posted Friday, Kevin Posobiec, founder of the Human Events website, highlighted how protesters appeared to be blocking traffic in downtown Minneapolis.
He wrote:
Once these clips are posted on forums like X, right-wing aggregator accounts, such as End Wokeness and other influencers, including Matt Walsh from the Daily Wire, repost them to their millions of followers. These clips have become the talk of all social media, sometimes reaching television stations where they become the main evidence for efforts to justify the expansion of the Trump administration in American cities.
The content appears to follow a similar narrative to that coming directly from DHS. In a Monday interview with Fox News, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said Ross was defending himself and other officers.
“[The officer] he followed his training. He feared for his life. “He was afraid of law enforcement in his life,” said McLaughlin.
The Trump administration has been preparing for this moment for months. Since at least last summer, right-wing activists have implicated immigration officials during ICE raids as a way to justify administrative violations. Now, with an agent under investigation for Good’s murder, many of these same promoters are using the same playbook.
Right-wing activists began arriving in Minneapolis shortly after a YouTube video from Nick Shirley, a right-wing activist, went viral in December claiming to uncover a $100 million fraud scheme involving Somali day care centers. Despite many local Minnesota outlets covering the same story for years, the video has garnered more than three million views, with prominent right-wing figures like Elon Musk retweeting clips from it.
Another law enforcement official told CNN earlier this month that the increase in Minnesota Department of Homeland Security agents was due to Shirley’s video.
ICE’s influence activities will only increase. Last month, i Washington Post reported that the agency plans to spend about $100 million to use content creators and geo-targeted ads across the Internet to help recruit future deportation officers.
