The Trump administration was caught red-handed digitally altering a photograph of a Minnesota anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protester being arrested — but they are not sorry about it in the least.
The protest took place at Cities Church in St. Paul, where one of the pastors is a field agent for ICE, as the Trump administration is deploying immigration agents throughout the city to terrorize and assault people. A group of demonstrators went to the church and disrupted a sermon, which enraged the Trump administration and triggered immediate vows to prosecute them under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act. The legislation makes illegal any conspiracy to "injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate," people from exercising "any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States."
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced on Thursday the arrest of Nekima Levy Armstrong, the organizer of the protest, accompanied by a picture of her being perp-walked in handcuffs with a stony expression on her face. However, soon after that, the official White House X account posted the same picture, but digitally altered to show her sobbing and wet with tears.
Nowhere did White House social media accounts disclose that the second image had been modified.
After some news outlets caught wind of this and reported it, the White House linked reporters to an X post by Deputy Communications Director Kaelan Dorr, who wrote: "YET AGAIN to the people who feel the need to reflexively defend perpetrators of heinous crimes in our country I share with you this message: Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue. Thank you for your attention to this matter."
Armstrong, for her part, spoke to CNN on the evening before her arrest and asserted that what happened during the protest is more complicated than the media and Trump administration officials are making it out to be.
According to her, the protesters initially came into the church, sat down, and listened to the sermon in silence, and Armstrong simply inquired about the pastor who works for ICE to the pastor giving the sermon, after which he turned antagonistic and escalated the situation to the point of the protesters chanting to drown him out.
