In the days since a masked federal agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, right-wing creators and influencers like Nick Sortor and Cam Higby have descended on Minneapolis, filming protesters and interviewing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. So far, they’ve produced a steady stream of content that appears 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.
“HELL YES! ICE just SMASHED a leftist activist’s car window in and pulled them out after they interfered in ICE’s operations in Minneapolis. MORE OF THIS!” Sortor posted to X on Sunday, “Consequences must be STEEP!”
These creators have focused much of their content on how protesters are allegedly using personal vehicles and blocking traffic to obstruct ICE operations. In one video posted on Friday, Kevin Posobiec, a creator for the far-right Human Events website, highlighted how protesters seemingly shut down traffic in downtown Minneapolis.
“Protestors are in hi-vis safety vests manipulating traffic. We’re out here,” he posted.
Once these clips are posted to platforms like X, right-wing aggregation accounts, like End Wokeness and other influencers, including Matt Walsh from the Daily Wire, repost them to their millions of followers. These clips then become talking points across social media, sometimes making it to cable television channels where they become primary evidence in attempts to justify the Trump administration’s surge on American cities.
The content has seemingly followed the same narrative as what’s coming directly out of the DHS. In a Monday interview with Fox News, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claims that Ross was protecting himself and other officers.
“[The officer] followed his training. He was in fear for his life. He was in fear for the law enforcement officers’ around his lives,” says McLaughlin. “And that’s when he followed his training and this situation turned deadly.”
The Trump administration has been preparing for this moment for months. Since at least last summer, right-wing influencers have embedded with immigration officials during ICE raids as a means of justifying the administration’s crackdowns. Now, with an agent under scrutiny for Good’s killing, many of these same influencers are running a similar playbook.
Right-wing influencers started arriving in Minneapolis shortly after a YouTube video from Nick Shirley, a right-wing creator, went viral in December claiming to uncover a purported $100 million fraud scheme involving Somali child care centers. Despite multiple local Minnesota outlets covering a similar story for years, the video garnered more than 3 million views, with prominent right-wing figures like Elon Musk reposting clips from it.
One law enforcement officer told CNN earlier this month that the Department of Homeland Security’s surge of agents to Minnesota was due in part to Shirley’s video.
ICE’s influencer operations are only going to get bigger. Last month, The Washington Post reported that the agency is planning to spend around $100 million to use content creators and geo-targeted ads across the internet to help recruit future deportation officers.
