Petition: NYT, CNN, and NBC Must Scrutinize ICE Charges

Major news organizations including The New York Times, CNN, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, and The Washington Post need to stop treating the Justice Department’s latest charges against ICE protesters as routine criminal prosecutions. The indictments stemming from Minneapolis protests raise serious questions about whether federal law enforcement is targeting political dissent rather than addressing genuine public safety threats. When protest activity is met with sweeping federal charges and rhetoric about domestic extremism, the public deserves scrutiny—not stenography.

Yet too much media coverage focuses on the allegations themselves while failing to examine the apparent weakness of the government's case and the broader political context. These prosecutions come amid a pattern of efforts to portray immigration activists, protesters, and critics of ICE as security threats. When federal authorities pursue aggressive charges against demonstrators while elevating political narratives about "antifa" and unrest, journalists should be asking whether the goal is justice—or deterrence of future dissent.

We call on The New York Times, CNN, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, The Washington Post, and other major outlets to investigate these prosecutions aggressively—examining the evidence, the legal theories being deployed, and whether federal power is being used to target political opponents. The public deserves reporting that scrutinizes politically charged prosecutions with the same rigor applied to any other exercise of government power.