Photograph by Scott Olson/Getty Images
The front-page Drudge Report headline was blunt and incendiary: “WAR: PROTESTERS STORM ICE HOTEL.” The accompanying image, depicting the scene Sunday night outside the Home2 Suites in Minneapolis, seemed to confirm the chaos: A man bundled in a thick winter coat raised his mittened hands—a phone in one, some sort of badge in the other—as a federal agent trained a shotgun toward his chest.
But the man photographed was not an activist. He is Nick Valencia, a veteran Atlanta journalist who left his job as a CNN correspondent last summer to launch an independent news outlet. In that moment, he wasn’t doing anything extraordinary—just what reporters have long done in moments of civil unrest: documenting what was unfolding in public view.
The image ricocheted across social media. “And now I’m the poster boy for protesters this morning,” he said of the Drudge Report post in an interview Monday. “I probably put too much hope in that I will be protected by the press freedom of this country. That’s clearly not the case.”
Photograph courtesy of Nick Valencia
Valencia traveled from Atlanta late last week to report on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown—and the protests and backlash it’s triggered. What he encountered there, he said, wasn’t uniquely directed at him. That, in many ways, he said, is the problem; no one seemed safe from the hostility of the federal government.
It didn’t feel like anything was under control in Minneapolis, Valencia said. In places where protesters clashed with federal police, the city sooner resembled a war zone.
Minneapolis’s emergence as a flashpoint was fueled in part by viral media and political pressure. In late December, right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley posted videos alleging widespread federal funding fraud at Somali-run childcare centers, drawing tens of millions of views and national attention, even as state officials identified little evidence of such sweeping claims. The upswing of federal activity there coincided with the viral spread of Shirley’s reporting, culminating in “Operation Metro Surge.” Since then, two people, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, have been killed by federal agents, and the city of Minneapolis has sued the Department of Homeland Security to stop the operation.
On Sunday, where protesters had gathered outside the Home2 hotel housing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) forces—ensuring officers couldn’t sleep, making noise, breaking windows—Valencia filmed as a federal agent fired a less-lethal shotgun round at demonstrators, striking one in the chest. Afterward, Valencia said, the agent spit blood from his mouth. It wasn’t clear why. Valencia asked if he was okay.
“He says, ‘I’m fine. Are you the press? Ask yourself where the Minneapolis police department is.’ It was like this awkward, impromptu press conference sort of thing,” Valencia recalled.
Nearby, Valencia said, a Minneapolis Police Department SWAT team appeared to be stationed in an armored vehicle, issuing dispersal orders. ICE agents, local police, and other federal officers seemed to operate simultaneously, but with little clarity about who was commanding the scene, or what the objective was beyond clearing space through force.
Federal officers drove demonstrators and journalists alike away from the hotel with flashbang grenades and chemical agents. Tear gas hung thick in the air. Valencia continued filming as officers tried to block his view.
“If we were network [TV], you would care,” Valencia said as agents marched him and others away from the scene. “I’m a former CNN correspondent … I know you guys have a hard time identifying independent media, but I am legitimate. I’m a journalist, and I can document this.”
But Valencia said that agents told him that they “don’t care,” and that he needed to stay back.
He estimates he was tear-gassed at least 10 times over the weekend. The concussive bursts of flashbang grenades sounded a steady, fearsome drumline. At one point, law enforcement deployed a long-range acoustic device (LRAD), a military-grade, truck-mounted sound cannon capable of causing disorientation and hearing damage. Valencia only witnessed the LRAD being used to issue dispersal orders, but its presence alone felt like a threat.
On television, scenes like this have become familiar enough to risk feeling abstract. In person, Valencia said, they are anything but. Tear gas floods the body: eyes seal shut, lungs burn, tears and snot pour uncontrollably, disorientation sets in. It blinds, suffocates, and incapacitates—even before flashbangs explode or sound weapons pierce the air. Rubber bullets don’t bounce, as the name suggests; they can break bones. Live ammunition is always a finger’s twitch away.
None of this should seem normal, Valencia said.
Throughout the weekend, Valencia said he found himself desperately shouting, “I’m press! Press, press, press!” routinely. One federal agent, he said, responded last weekend, “I don’t care who you are; I will f***ing shoot you.”
“I’m still processing it all,” Valencia said. His right hand started to shake on Monday morning, an echo of the trauma.
Valencia worries about how moments like these are reframed after the fact—boiled down into partisan rhetoric that can cloud what’s actually happening on the ground. His anxiety underscores a broader concern: what this environment says about the country right now, and who federal law enforcement considers a nuisance—or threat—within it.
One of Valencia’s goals in Minneapolis was to report the story of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was famously photographed wearing a bunny hat after ICE officers separated him from his parents. He spoke to Liam’s teachers, even visited the boy’s locker at Valley View Elementary.
“This is not just about the Somalis,” Valencia said of his reporting focus. “It’s not just the Latinos. It’s the allies, the principals and teachers at Liam’s school who I went and interviewed. I got invited in because they knew me; they’d been watching my reporting.”
But the reporting trip collapsed into a blur of smoke, sirens, and chemical weapons, as protests intensified following the January 24 killing of Alex Pretti. The police tactics Valencia encountered—mass crowd dispersal, overlapping agencies, violent, sometimes deadly force—were not exceptional responses to demonstrations. They were routine.
This, Valencia believes, is something Americans should find disturbing—the First Amendment on the receiving end of a gun barrel.
From 1,100 miles away, scenes like this can feel distant. But Atlanta has seen versions of this before, during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, Stop Cop City activism, and earlier, smaller anti-ICE demonstrations. Minneapolis, he said, is simply showing what happens when such protest suppression tactics become the status quo.
It wasn’t easy deciding to ship out from Atlanta for the most embattled city in the country right now. Valencia had a wife and two young sons worrying about him at home. “Friday morning, I picked a fight with my family,” he said. “I told them I was doing this out of fear. I was scared.”
Valencia is a third-generation Mexican American. Yet last June, he began carrying a copy of his birth certificate in his wallet. He found himself in Minneapolis because he fears a future where his children are persecuted for how they look, where their family came from. The least he can do is tell the world how America got to this point.
“I don’t know how to talk to my kids about this, because they are 8 and 5 years old,” he said. How do you explain to a child that masked men with body armor and rifles are kicking in doors, capturing people who look like them?”
“I don’t know how to explain to them that dad has to go bear witness,” Valencia said “I’m also scared that I might become the story.”
Another fear: What happens if the story goes underreported?
“I’m not out there screaming, ‘F*** ICE,’” he said. “I came here to shine a light.”
