After the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of a masked federal agent, right-wing content creators and online influencers including Nick Sortor and Cam Higby have flocked to Minneapolis to cover the fallout. They have spent their time filming local protests and conducting interviews with agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
To date, the group has produced a steady stream of content crafted specifically to frame Minneapolis as a lawless, ungoverned city, while justifying the killing of Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross as a legitimate act of 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, adding, “Consequences must be STEEP!”
Most of the content shared by these creators centers on claims that protesters are using personal vehicles to block roadways and disrupt ICE’s work. In a video posted this past Friday, Kevin Posobiec, a creator for the far-right outlet Human Events, highlighted footage that appeared to show protesters shutting down traffic in downtown Minneapolis.
“Protestors are in hi-vis safety vests manipulating traffic. We’re out here,” he posted alongside the clip.
Once these snippets are shared to platforms like X, large right-wing aggregation accounts such as End Wokeness and high-profile influencers including Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh repost them to their combined audiences of millions of followers. The clips then become widespread talking points across social media, and often get picked up by cable television networks. On these outlets, they are used as core evidence to defend the Trump administration’s large-scale law enforcement surge in major U.S. cities.
The narrative pushed by these influencers aligns almost perfectly with the official account from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In a Monday interview with Fox News, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed Ross acted only to protect himself and other officers on the scene.
“[The officer] followed his training. He was in fear for his life. He was in fear for the law enforcement officers’ around his lives,” McLaughlin said. “And that’s when he followed his training and this situation turned deadly.”
The Trump administration has been preparing for this moment for months. Dating back to at least last summer, right-wing influencers have embedded with immigration officials during ICE raids as a strategy to justify the administration’s hardline immigration crackdowns. Now, with Ross facing intense public scrutiny over Good’s killing, many of these same creators are following this exact playbook.
Right-wing influencers began traveling to Minneapolis shortly after a December YouTube video from right-wing creator Nick Shirley went viral. Shirley’s video claimed to uncover an alleged $100 million fraud scheme involving Somali child care centers. Though multiple local Minnesota news outlets had covered similar reporting on the issue for years, Shirley’s video gained more than 3 million views, and clips were reposted by major right-wing figures including Elon Musk.
Earlier this month, a law enforcement officer told CNN that DHS’s decision to surge extra agents to Minnesota was partially prompted by Shirley’s viral video.
ICE’s coordinated influencer operations are only expected to expand in the coming months. Last month, The Washington Post reported that the agency plans to spend roughly $100 million to partner with content creators and run geo-targeted ads across the internet to recruit new deportation officers.