When federal immigration operations began sweeping across Los Angeles in June, our newsroom worked around the clock. I didn’t have to tell them to. No one wanted to stop.
One reporter’s family members were being followed. Another staffer’s family went into hiding — despite having legal status. Sources we’d cultivated for years suddenly wouldn’t answer calls. At LA Public Press, a 14-person nonprofit newsroom led by and largely staffed by people of color who grew up in the neighborhoods we cover, everyone on staff was personally touched by the raids in some way. We weren’t covering some abstract story happening to other people. We were covering home.
By July, I had to force people to take weekends off. Soon after, every other Friday became mandatory time away. The story hasn’t stopped, but boundaries are harder to draw when you’re covering what’s happening to your own family.
It took us weeks to realize we were facing the same dangers as foreign correspondents in conflict zones — the threat of violence, retaliation and the exhaustion of sustained trauma coverage. But we didn’t have their security teams, legal protections or institutional support.
International news organizations rotate correspondents out of conflict zones. They provide hostile environment training, security consultants, trauma counselors and legal teams specializing in protecting journalists in dangerous situations.
Local newsrooms covering militarized federal operations in their own communities? Sometimes all we have is Google, group chats and each other.
Recognizing how desperately our team and other local journalists needed guidance in those first weeks, we reached out to the International Women’s Media Foundation for emergency training and opened it to other newsrooms across Southern California. Over 70 journalists showed up.
At one point, the facilitator urged us to build community with journalists from other outlets, to go out together for safety. An elder reporter raised her hand. She’d never worked with reporters from competing newsrooms. Journalists competed; they didn’t collaborate.
We held a separate training just for our staff with our legal counsel. My staff asked a question that caught me off guard: Should we even identify as press? They’d watched journalists get targeted by law enforcement during protests. They weren’t sure anymore if press credentials protected us or painted targets on our backs.
Our lawyer paused before answering. She wouldn’t tell us not to wear the vests — they’re all we have for physical protection. But she couldn’t promise they’d keep us safe. All she could offer: Use your judgment. Assess each situation.
We were building the infrastructure foreign correspondents have fine-tuned, except we were doing it in real time, while the story was happening.
Even with more safeguards in place, it wasn’t enough when our reporter, Martín Macias Jr., published his story about Metro bus operators. Two drivers were fired for protecting passengers from immigration enforcement. The Federal Transit Administration tweeted at us in defense of the firings and calling their reinstatement “disgraceful.”
Our entire newsroom stopped to assess: Were we now targets? Members of our staff had been doxxed before. Days earlier, my partner had called about a suitcase and a gasoline container left in front of our house. At the time, it seemed like random city debris. After the FTA tweet, I wasn’t sure anymore.
We got the rest of the staff on DeleteMe, a service that removes personal information from data broker sites, and tightened our digital security protocols. For a small newsroom with limited funds, maintaining strong digital security isn’t easy. Services to remove personal data, encrypted communications tools, VPNs for secure web browsing, security training — it adds up fast. Tens of thousands of dollars that small outlets don’t usually budget for. But we need it to keep doing this work safely and to keep our families safe.
What does federal attention mean for our safety? For our sources?
That’s the calculation foreign correspondents make in conflict zones. Now it’s what local journalists are making in American cities.
As a small newsroom, we rely on freelancers. Two of ours were hit by rubber bullets while covering protests. Another was arrested. We had to quickly develop protocols — figuring out liability, safety equipment, emergency contacts, and what to do when they got hurt or detained.
As we went along, we developed threat assessment policies from scratch. When breaking stories happened off work hours — unusual for our nonbreaking news newsroom — what was the chain of command? How do we decide if it’s safe to send someone out? When did it make sense to send freelancers, and how could we protect them and ourselves legally?
We also had to learn when not to send people out at all. If another newsroom was already covering something, why put our staff at risk? That question opened something bigger: Small newsrooms don’t have to compete. When similar operations launched in Chicago in September, we partnered with Block Club Chicago. Our cities could learn from each other’s coverage and safety strategies. We’re also piloting collaborative coverage with LA outlets, each newsroom covering different angles based on their community ties.
Our internal enforcement reporting guide, vetted by the First Amendment Coalition and our legal counsel, was shared with other newsrooms. We also developed community safety guides — including how to protect yourself when talking to media and how to navigate living in an ICE-occupied neighborhood — and printed them in English and Spanish. We held community zine-making sessions to fold and distribute them, getting the guides directly into people’s hands.
This fall, we’re convening LA community outlets to develop shared legal support systems. Later this month, we’re holding a webinar with The 19th‘s network of 122 partner newsrooms.
We’re sharing everything we develop. Not out of generosity — out of necessity. When other newsrooms are safer, our reporters are safer.
The Committee to Protect Journalists — an organization that usually tracks attacks on journalists overseas — is now tracking attacks on journalists covering immigration enforcement in American cities. Reporters have been shot with projectiles, detained, harassed, had equipment seized.
Newsrooms in Chicago, D.C., and cities across the country are covering these operations without the infrastructure that international correspondents have. When journalists can’t safely cover these operations, certain stories simply disappear. You don’t find out about bus drivers fired for standing up to protect passengers. You don’t hear from families hiding in their homes. You don’t learn about unconstitutional enforcement tactics because witnesses are too afraid to talk.
There are dozens of stories like these that never got told. This year alone, LA has faced ICE operations and devastating wildfires. Imagine what we wouldn’t know if journalists hadn’t been there to document it.
Federal immigration operations haven’t stopped. While continuing in LA, the belligerent federal enforcement has expanded to Chicago, D.C., Portland, New York, and elsewhere. Our coverage continues.
We’ve had real impact. The bus drivers got reinstated. Metro is under pressure to create safety plans. Other newsrooms are using the infrastructure we built. Our audience grew 2,300% in the first two months of covering the operations. We’ve reached nearly 30 million on social media. The attention proves people are hungry for this kind of accountability reporting — but it doesn’t make the work any safer.
We take weekends off now (most of the time). We’ve learned to say no. The crisis coverage feels sustainable. Almost.
But the operations keep escalating. ICE shootings in Ontario and South LA within nine days of each other. Federal agents firing into vehicles in Phoenix, Chicago, San Bernardino. An 18-year-old student detained while walking his dog, transferred to Arizona without his parents’ knowledge. A 15-year-old with disabilities handcuffed outside his high school, guns drawn, in a case of mistaken identity.
We don’t know from one day to the next what’s going to happen. What’s scariest is how quickly this level of violence is starting to feel normal.
And somewhere in LA right now, there’s a story that should be told but won’t be, because the journalist who could tell it is calculating whether the danger is worth it, and they don’t have the protections that would make that calculation easier.
When local journalists can’t safely document what’s happening in your community, you lose the ability to hold power accountable. And right now, that’s the calculation we’re all making.
This piece was originally published by Poynter.
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