October 9 marked one month of “Operation Midway Blitz,” the Trump administration’s effort to target and harass immigrant communities in Chicago with military-style raids and violent enforcement to advance its mass deportation plans. Fox News has responded by celebrating and justifying the violence Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have unleashed on Chicago residents regardless of citizenship or immigration status.
Fox inaugurated the operation by embedding a reporter with ICE agents in a move reminiscent of the height of the global war on terror, signaling to its audience that Chicago was a battlefield that required a militarized crackdown. Over the subsequent four weeks, Fox dutifully fulfilled that expectation with coverage that painted civic resistance to ICE as proof that Trump’s authoritarian tactics were needed, while simultaneously whitewashing the agency’s worst abuses.