How to Film ICE
In January 2026, two Americans were killed in the act of watching Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Minneapolis. Renee Nicole Good was acting as a legal observer while her wife recorded the federal immigration agents they encountered. Alex Pretti was holding a phone in his hand, filming the agents who would soon take his life. Yet as dangerous as the mere act of observation became for these victims of ICE and Border Patrol's violence, video is also what documented their murders and is now holding federal agents accountable.
That's the paradox United States residents face as they decide how to resist—and record—ICE's incursion into American cities.
“Unfortunately, there is no way to film ‘safely’ right now—I think everybody may be taking a risk because of how aggressive and brazen and outright illegal ICE’s conduct has been,” says Trevor Timm, cofounder and executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation. (Disclosure: WIRED’s global editorial director sits on Freedom of the Press Foundation’s board.) “Alex Pretti was killed in part because he was filming ICE, which is an absolute travesty. But we saw that shooting from half a dozen angles because there were other people there who were filming as well. And because they were filming, we saw the egregious lies that the Trump administration was spreading almost immediately.”
This tension has existed for more than two decades around the world as widespread access to smartphones has made video documentation and livestreaming a pivotal tool for activists and other concerned people looking to expose injustice and impact political discourse. In the US, people with cameras or smartphones out are being targeted by federal agents despite the First Amendment of the US Constitution protecting the activity of recording government operators in public spaces.
https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-film-ice/