Who tells the story? And whose story is it? Values and Practices when Reporting on ICE

This piece was written for and funded by Transom, where it was originally published.

In my role as Managing Editor at Feet in 2 Worlds — a non-profit outlet covering the stories of immigrants in the U.S., reported by journalists from immigrant backgrounds — I always insist that we cover immigrants from all sorts of angles, not just “capital-I Immigration” policy. We’ve produced stories on climate change, misinformation, health, labor, economy, food, gun rights, housing, and family through the lens of immigrants and immigrant communities — just to name a few.

But our quickly-changing reality has forced our hand to cover “capital-I Immigration.” Political rhetoric about who deserves to stay and who deserves to get deported have solidified into official domestic policy. Concerns around immigrant safety have shifted from individual crime to federal immigration enforcement and violent responses to protests, organizers, and mutual aid efforts.

And of course, ICE raids have become more frequent and constant all over the U.S. — in plain sight and all too close to so many of our homes. In 2025, ICE received a $75 billion supplement to its budget, which it has at least until 2029 to use. So it’s very possible that we could be covering them for a long, long time.

So how the heck are we supposed to report on ICE? What does it mean to be producing and reporting stories in this moment — a moment that continues to drag on and on? What has worked, and what doesn’t work?

I’ve put together some values and best practices to consider when covering ICE. These come from a combination of my experience at Feet in 2 Worlds, along with insights from other journalists at discussions hosted by the Los Angeles Reporting Collective.

Who tells the story?

This is one of my most basic questions when both listening and producing — who is the one telling the story? 

Stories of immigration policy and enforcement inherently impact immigrants. Are immigrants getting the chance to report on what’s happening to their communities? Are they getting to write the stories, record the interviews, ask questions, and share what’s going on?

If you belong to these communities, then you should feel absolutely empowered to report and produce these stories. You’re going to have more familiarity with the details and nuances, a head start in knowing where to look for stories and who to build trust with. Speaking the language of your community, both literally and figuratively, is a major asset and access key. Your familiarity is a strength, not a liability — do not let anyone tell you otherwise.

Speaking the language of your community, both literally and figuratively, is a major asset and access key. Your familiarity is a strength, not a liability — do not let anyone tell you otherwise.

If you’re not part of these communities, what can you do to support the work of those who are? If you’re in a leadership role, you’ve got a responsibility to build, maintain, and support a diverse range of reporters (as the brilliant Stephanie Foo has explained on Transom.org time and time again).

If the concern that people might be “too close to the story” is enough for you to nix a pitch or re-assign a story, then you’re neglecting your duty to actually participate in and trust the editorial process.

You can still ask all the things a good editor should ask. How did you verify this information? Did you reach out to all parties involved for comment? You have the opportunity to guide and shape the story and support your team, instead of cutting them off out of fear and unwillingness to trust the process.

Go where you understand, and then a little further.

Using your familiarity as an asset, you can choose to cover what you know best. Who is the audience you’re uniquely suited to serve and inform? This is an opportunity for you to focus locally on specific neighborhoods, communities, and people who are not getting covered otherwise.

I remember once attending a talk by Roman Mars, where one particular guidance stood out to me: He said stories need to lead with what’s interesting instead of what’s important — and that “important” is the least interesting form of “interesting.”

When you’re familiar with a particular community (especially if you’re a part of it), your sense of what is interesting, notable, and unusual about a story from that community is going to be much more nuanced and specific and different than others’. Details an outsider might ignore will strike you differently. Follow that instinct.

And from there, push yourself a little further. Being familiar with the characters and communities of a story doesn’t mean you rely on existing knowledge and assumptions — it means you have more nuanced and relevant questions to ask, based on what stands out to you.

Where other journalists might have the impulse to be there just long enough to report a story and leave, stay long enough to learn.

Spend even more time in the community you’re reporting in. Where other journalists might have the impulse to be there just long enough to report a story and leave, stay long enough to learn. Learn where and who the community centers are. What are the stores, markets, restaurants, cafes, parks, libraries, churches, and other spaces that are key to the daily lives of the locals? Who are the street vendors, the shopkeepers, the workers and regulars that frequent those spots? Which person — once they trust you — suddenly unlocks access to dozens more people?

Being present in the long term builds trust and shows that you’re still willing to share their stories and amplify their voices long after ICE has come and gone. You get to learn even more yourself, and highlight the stories of the people and places that aren’t otherwise being highlighted.

The Feet in 2 Worlds story Working 9 to 5 to 9 told the story of Chinese home care workers in New York City fighting to end an exploitative labor practice in their industry. One of our reporters, Aria Young, is a Chinese American. She spent lots of time speaking to these workers in Mandarin, building trust in-language, eventually being welcomed into their homes and meeting spaces. In this clip, Aria is in the apartment of one Chinese home care worker, who shares the aches and pains of her daily work:

Whose story is it? Immigrants as subjects, not objects.

When reporting, ask yourself: who has agency in your story? To use a grammatical framework, I try to think of who is the subject, and who is the object? That is, who is the one doing the action, vs. who’s having action done to them?

Often, stories of ICE give the officers, government entities that hire them, and the politicians all the agency. They’re the ones who are taking action, while immigrants are just on the receiving end.

Go find and tell stories where immigrants are the ones with agency — where it’s through their experiences and perspectives that we understand what’s happening. How do they see the impact on their communities? How do they feel? What are they doing in response for themselves and for each other? It’s very possible to tell stories about the impact of ICE without letting them get to be the center of the story.

It’s very possible to tell stories about the impact of ICE without letting them get to be the center of the story.

And by changing whose eyes we’re looking through and shifting who we center, we also get to shift who gets to define the verbiage we use.

When ICE and other law enforcement are the subjects of the story, it’s all too easy to just use their own accounts, statements, and terminology to frame events. They get to do “targeted enforcement” for “removal” using “administrative authorization” and if something goes awry, then they’re using “less-than-lethal munitions” until something becomes an “officer-involved shooting.”

As the reporter, you have the ability and obligation to forgo jargon in favor of wording that makes things clear, understandable, and accessible to your audiences.

There’s stuff to cover other than the action.

It’s totally okay if you’re not able to go where the action is. While live breaking coverage is crucial, there’s still plenty of reporting to be done other than at ICE raids or protests.

After the smoke has cleared, these communities still exist. Follow up in the days, weeks, and months after an ICE action to see what has happened since. How have daily lives been changed? How have people changed the way they work, go to school, travel to and from home? What’s the impact on economies, health, safety? Do communities find themselves more isolated and scared? More activated and organized?

At Feet in 2 Worlds, we’re currently working on Surveilled and Sold, an investigative series about how surveillance technologies track immigrants in an era of mass deportation — and the ways corporations and the U.S. government buy, sell, and exchange our personal data. In the series, we look at how these technologies impact the daily lives of immigrants, even when they’re not directly encountering ICE.

You should also tell stories about what communities are doing to protect each other and themselves. ICE watches are a good starting point, but there are also stories of mutual aid, of people advocating for changes at city hall, of grassroots or underground organizing, of neighbors protecting the vulnerable in their communities. 

After the smoke has cleared, these communities still exist. Follow up in the days, weeks, and months after an ICE action to see what has happened since.

In July of 2025, LA Public Press reported about a community effort to protest at hotels where ICE agents were staying. Mariah Castañeda, LA Public Press’ co-founder and audience director, shared that her initial instinct was to cover this story as a breaking news item. But instead her team took a step back, and was able to build a more detailed narrative about how the protests came to be, who organized them, and how they’re spreading to other cities.

That story came into being by thinking about ways to report beyond the immediate moment.

Another example is Sophia Sleap’s piece, The People Who Show Up: Inside a Community’s Effort to Respond to ICE Raids, which was reported with the Los Angeles Reporting Collective. The story follows Proyecto Pastoral, an organization running one of L.A.’s rapid response networks in Boyle Heights, as volunteers learn how to respond to and confront the emotional toll of immigration enforcement. 

Those steps might lead to another useful story lens: solutions journalism. How are people trying to solve the problems related to ICE? These responses might be individual, or from groups in a community, or policy changes by governments, just to name some possibilities.

The Solutions Journalism Network offers a useful four-part framework for this:

• Response: Focuses on a response to a social problem — and on how that response has worked, or why it hasn’t
• Insight: Shows what can be learned from a response and why it matters to a newsroom’s audience
• Evidence: Provides data or qualitative results that indicate effectiveness (or a lack thereof)
• Limitations: Places responses in context; doesn’t shy away from revealing shortcomings

Protect your subjects.

Covering stories of ICE and speaking with immigrants means that you’re potentially putting your sources at risk — especially if those sources are not citizens. While in the past, protecting your sources may not have been as high of a priority, we are living in a time when active harm can come swiftly if you are not careful. This means our responsibility as journalists has evolved.

It is your responsibility to get totally informed consent from your sources. People in these communities may not fully understand the consequences of speaking with the press; you don’t want to put them in jeopardy or betray the trust that you’ve worked hard to build. You need to inform them of those consequences — not to scare them, but to be honest and maintain that trust. 

Covering stories of ICE and speaking with immigrants means that you’re potentially putting your sources at risk — especially if those sources are not citizens.

LA Public Press has created a media training guide specifically targeted toward community members to help them understand how to protect themselves when speaking with the media about ICE. 

Even with consent, you can also limit the information you publish about your sources. You can use only their first name, or a pseudonym. Details about their residence, workplace, school, etc. should be treated carefully — can you consider omitting certain details when it’s not relevant to the story? 

El Tímpano in the Bay Area developed a guide on protecting immigrant sources, which also discusses potential identifying information and limiting how many details to reveal about a source. Potential information identifiers might include:

They also mention practices to avoid entirely, such as: 

• Revealing the names of family members, especially if they have different legal statuses.
• Filming or photographing near sensitive locations that could reveal a source’s location.
• License plate numbers that are inadvertently revealed in photos.

Photographers should especially be careful about whether to show someone’s face. If a face is in the image, merely censoring it may not be effective enough to hide one’s identity. There are creative ways to photograph subjects while reducing their risk. Photojournalist Zaydee Sanchez suggests some techniques: photographs can feature backs of people, use images of just their hands and arms in action, or use the environment to block their face. Commissioning editorial illustrations can also protect your sources, with the added benefit of potentially protecting your audiences from any particularly traumatic images.

Audio reporters may already have the benefit of not automatically revealing a source’s appearance in their tape, but voices — when paired with other details — can still reveal someone’s identity. Distorting or obscuring the voice through engineering techniques can sometimes be reversed. For voices you need to protect, consider having a different person speak as the person, reading their words verbatim. It’s a practice we often already do when translating, so it’s already in our toolset.

Ultimately, your stories should be in service of informing, and respect the privacy and safety of sources and their communities. In the words of Mariah Castañeda: “Our communities aren’t for content.”

Protect your journalists (that includes you).

Reporting on ICE and what immigrants are going through right now is a difficult and increasingly dangerous job. It takes a toll on your body, mind, and spirit. Just as you have a responsibility to protect your sources, you absolutely have a responsibility to protect yourselves and the other people you work with.

Before sending someone into the field or going yourself, be sure to do a risk assessment. What are the potential threats to the immediate and long-term safety of the reporter (including physical, legal, and personal)? What is the severity of those threats, and how likely or unlikely are they? What can the reporter and their team do to mitigate these risks? 

Even for stories that don’t obviously put you in direct danger, it’s worth going through this process. Aside from what ICE or police might do, there are always other concerns: what if you get stranded without transportation? Will you need access to certain medicines? Will weather or illness be an issue? Do you need someone to accompany you to enter unfamiliar areas or speak with sources in person?

Just as you have a responsibility to protect your sources, you absolutely have a responsibility to protect yourselves and the other people you work with.

In January 2025, my team at Feet in 2 Worlds was in the middle of reporting for our series The Hustle about how immigrants in the U.S. navigate a changing economy. 

We already had producer Ann Marie Awad on the ground in Colorado, but we wanted to send our other producer, Andrés — an experienced immigrant journalist who could report and speak to our sources in Spanish. Andrés was ready to fly from New York and go into the field.

Then within days of Trump’s inauguration, these Venezuelan asylum seekers became the first new targets of his aggressive anti-immigrant policies. The story pivoted completely — from a changing economy to the intensity and fear of ICE detentions and deportations. 

In the days leading up to Andrés’s flight to Colorado, our team debated back and forth about whether it was safe anymore for him to be on the ground in that environment. Did it matter what his immigration status was? That he was there for work as a journalist? Would him merely being a Spanish-speaker or a Latino in proximity to these communities put him at risk? And what would happen if he did encounter ICE? If he were to get detained? What was our plan of action? As an all-remote team, we didn’t even have a head office, much less a Colorado bureau for him to work out of. And we definitely didn’t have local legal support to come to his aid should anything happen.

At the last moment, we decided it wasn’t worth the risk to Andrés. We asked him to stay in New York and continue to work on the story from there. We affirmed our priority to protect the safety of the journalists we work with, especially considering their immigrant backgrounds. But it was also the first time I had to help make a decision to protect our journalists specifically from the actions of our own government.

Safety planning is a process Feet in 2 Worlds now invests in for every reporter. We use resources developed by the IWMF, an organization that highly prioritizes newsroom safety. Some of our current safety practices include:

• Doing a risk assessment with our journalists — what are the biggest dangers to them, how likely are they, and how can we mitigate them?
• Share multiple contact methods. These might include Signal, phone number, email, and relevant addresses of the reporter, the team, and any relevant support contacts.
• Identify on-the-ground support. Are there colleagues or trusted individuals who can be relied on for help nearby? Will legal or safety support be available?
• Develop a check-in plan. Every time the reporter goes out, they’ll let the planned person or team know where they’ll be, when they’re leaving, and when they’ve returned home.
• Establish a protocol for what to do if the reporter doesn’t check back in. How much time must pass before we follow the protocol? Are there partners, friends, roommates, or family that can be contacted to double check the status of the reporter? If something has gone wrong, are there legal contacts and emergency contacts to inform?

All these steps go for even routine interviews and field recording, but goes doubly so for those covering protests or enforcement actions. 

That journalists might get detained, arrested, or shot at is not a new occurrence, but they’re happening with increasing frequency. Especially if you’re covering raids or protests, you’re likely to encounter tear gas, rubber bullets, and other “less-lethal” weapons being used.

For those who are reporting at a physically risky event, be prepared with the right protective equipment. Makeshift tools like bicycle helmets or swim goggles may end up endangering you more. Some equipment to consider include:

• An Impact-rated Helmet
• Eye Protection: goggles or glasses with MIL-PRF-32432 ratings (or equivalent)
• Respiratory Protection (rated P100)
• Body Armor (soft armor “Level IIIA” or higher) 
• Groin Protection (regardless of gender)
• First-Aid Kit (with tourniquet, chest seal, gauze, and bandages) 
• Sudecon Chemical Decontamination Wipes

When it comes to digital safety, be aware of what digital tools and communication methods can be searched. Texts and calls on your phone can be intercepted. Turn off biometric login for your phones so that others cannot just use your face or fingerprints to access your data. Know that shared workspaces like Google (which so many of us use, myself included) can share the information you keep in your email or docs with law enforcement.

When you’re out there witnessing and documenting the harm that is happening to others, you might feel the instinct to minimize the things that happen to you both physically and mentally, especially in comparison to others. It’s okay to acknowledge the ways you are affected and might be experiencing trauma too. That is also worth documenting, at least for your own sake so that you can be treated later.

You can’t cover every story. It’s okay to give yourself room to breathe, to rest, and not rush to every new thing.

Give yourself a chance to recover after covering a particularly challenging story. Consider going to therapy (if you don’t already) to process what you’re witnessing in the course of reporting your stories. And give yourself time off. You can’t cover every story. It’s okay to give yourself room to breathe, to rest, and not rush to every new thing. If it’s really that important, maybe pass along the lead to someone else to go report — at the very least it’s building trust and camaraderie with other reporters covering this difficult topic.

There are so many other resources out there on protecting yourselves. I’ve collected a few here for you to start with:

• The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) developed a guide to personal protective equipment that goes into depth about different kinds of body armor, helmets, eye protection, hearing protection, breathing filters, and so much more. 
• CPJ also has a guide about physical and digital safety when covering potentially violent situations. 
• National Press Photographers Association also has a checklist for covering protests, including equipment recommendations and practices.
• LA Press Club similarly has a guide on safely covering protests and a visual field guide identifying law enforcement uniforms, weapons, and PPE.
• LA Press Club also provides a list of legal hotlines and resources for journalists in California; available resources will depend on where you live and work.

Protect your journalism.

“Anyone out there to document is committing an act of journalism,” says Adam Rose, deputy director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation. No matter the size and reputation of the newsroom one works with (if any), journalists have a right to be present and document what’s happening. 

Rose sees this moment as an opportunity to communicate and collaborate across different newsrooms as a way to keep each other safe. Out in the field, look out for who else is reporting and watch each other’s backs. Share your contact information like your phone number or Signal and stay in touch. You might often be reporting alone, and knowing other journalists on the ground can be a source of safety.

If you’re prevented from telling the story, then you are the story.

Adam Rose, deputy director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation

When ICE and other institutions choose not to recognize your press rights and press credentials, be willing to stand up for each other. Rose says, “If you’re prevented from telling the story, then you are the story.” The moment your reporting is blocked by ICE or police, you’ve become part of the story and that’s worth sharing. Editors, unions, and lawyers of newsrooms should be prepared to support journalists when this becomes the case.

What value are you bringing in your reporting?

Articulate for yourself the intention for your reporting. What value are you bringing to your readers and listeners? What role do you have in informing communities, amplifying their experiences, and connecting them? Are you there to just document what’s happening, or are you hoping to shape what happens next? 

If we’re reporting on the communities we’re living in, it would be unreasonable to act from a place of detachment, as if you’re just some outsider for whom it doesn’t matter what the future brings. 

Even without editorializing or advocating, your reporting can still have an impact. Your findings can inform policy changes locally and nationally. Sharing solutions people are trying — by showing both what works and what the limitations are — can help others elsewhere learn and iterate on those solutions themselves.

What role do you have in informing communities, amplifying their experiences, and connecting them? Are you there to just document what’s happening, or are you hoping to shape what happens next? 

You can serve your community’s needs directly, by giving them information and guidance based on your reporting. As one example, LA Public Press developed this guide on “How to navigate living in an ICE-occupied neighborhood in LA County” for those living with ICE in their daily lives.

Reporting on ICE is a constant reminder that we live in a confusing and scary time. When we document the horrible things being inflicted and experienced, do we expect our audiences to just consume that information and continue on with their lives? How many people see news as just another source of anxiety and trauma and choose to avoid it altogether?

Whatever you might feel about what the role of journalists should or shouldn’t include, it’s at least worth thinking about what the limits of journalism are right now, and imagining what journalism could do to inform, engage, and usefully help people not just understand what is happening but what they could do themselves.

This story was funded by Transom, where it was originally published.

Feet in 2 Worlds is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Ford Foundation, the Fernandez Pave the Way Foundation, the Elizabeth Bond Davis Foundation, an anonymous donor, and contributors to our annual NewsMatch campaign.