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‘Dark, Bizarre Stuff’: White House Posts Deepfake Image of Arrested ICE Protester Crying
"All of us are on full notice that this White House feels no compunction about concocting obvious lies, concedes nothing when its lies are exposed, and should be presumptively disbelieved in all matters."
Jan 22, 2026
Continuing its bizarre and often legally questionable use of social media to publicize law enforcement operations, the official White House account published an artificially generated deepfake image of a protester arrested on Thursday by the FBI.
Earlier that day, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem had posted about Nekima Levy Armstrong, one of three people who were arrested for disrupting a service last week at the Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer and field office leader, David Easterwood, reportedly serves as a pastor.
Noem described Levy Armstrong, who leads a local civil rights organization known as the Racial Justice Network, as someone "who played a key role in orchestrating the Church Riots in St. Paul, Minnesota."
There is notably no evidence that the protesters engaged in or threatened violence, as implied by her use of the word "riot." Video shows protesters disrupting the service by chanting slogans like "ICE out" and demanding justice for Renee Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis earlier this month.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the protesters had been charged under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, which 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."
In her post, Noem shared a photo of Levy Armstrong being led away by an agent, whose face is pixelated to hide his identity. In the photo, Levy Armstrong appears stone-faced and unfazed by the arrest.
Hours later, the official White House account shared the exact same image—accompanied by text describing her as a “far-left agitator”—but with one notable difference. Levy Armstrong's face was digitally altered to make it appear as if she was sobbing profusely while being led out by the agent. Nowhere did the account make clear that the image had been doctored.
"Did the White House digitally alter this image of Nekima Levy to make her cry???" asked Peter Rothpletz, a reporter for Zeteo, who described it as "bizarre, dark stuff."
Sure enough, CNN senior reporter Daniel Dale later said the White House had "confirmed its official X account posted a fake image of a woman arrested in Minnesota after interrupting a service at a church where an ICE official appears to be a pastor," and that "the White House image altered the actual photo to wrongly make it seem like the defendant was sobbing."
Asked for comment, Dale said the White House directed him to a social media post by Kaelan Dorr, the White House deputy communications director, who wrote: "Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue."
Posting artificially generated images of their targets sobbing has become a house style of sorts for the White House account.
In March 2025, the account posted an image, altered to appear in the style of a Studio Ghibli film, of Virginia Basora-Gonzalez, an alleged undocumented immigrant and convicted fentanyl trafficker, crying while handcuffed during her ICE arrest in Philadelphia.
In July, the White House posted an AI-altered photograph of Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) after he criticized an ICE raid in which agents arrested hundreds of farmworkers in Ventura County, California. They edited Gomez's congressional photo to make it appear as if he was crying, referring to him as "Cryin' Jimmy."
But the fake image of Levy Armstrong hardly appeared as a "meme." It was subtle enough that, without having seen the original, it was not immediately apparent that it had been altered, raising concerns about the White House's willingness to publish blatantly deceptive information pertaining to a criminal investigation.
Anna Bower, a senior editor at Lawfare, suggested that for the government to post a fake, degrading image of a criminal suspect could be considered a "prejudicial extrajudicial statement," which can undermine the case against Levy Armstrong.
The Trump administration has been caught in an untold number of lies, particularly about those arrested, brutalized, and killed by its law enforcement agencies. This includes Renee Good herself, whom members of the Trump administration tarred as a "domestic terrorist" within hours after her killing, without conducting an investigation and despite video evidence to the contrary.
Bulwark journalist Will Saletan said that with this deepfake post, "all of us are on full notice that this White House feels no compunction about concocting obvious lies, concedes nothing when its lies are exposed, and should be presumptively disbelieved in all matters. Nothing they say should be accepted without independent confirmation."
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The Nation Responds to a 'Truly Terrifying' Week
2026 began with the emergence of a new American colonial empire abroad and the deadly escalation of Trump’s cruel, racist anti-immigrant program at home.
Jan 10, 2026
“Truly terrifying.” That was how National Nurses United executive director Puneet Maharaj described this week in a group text exchange in the aftermath of the brazen murder of Renee Nicole Good by Immigration and Custom Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis on January 7. A day later there was another shooting, some 1,700 miles away in Portland, Oregon, of Luis David Nico Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras by border patrol agents. And just a week after Keith Porter was shot and killed while celebrating on New Year’s Eve by an off-duty ICE agent in Northridge, California, a Los Angeles suburb.
All three acts of violence capped a year in which the draconian anti-immigrant drive launched by President Donald Trump and campaign architect Stephen Miller has terrorized immigrant communities and sparked protests across the nation. A year in which at least 32 people have also died in ICE custody, the agency’s most deadly year in decades, according to the Detention Watch Network. Some were long-time residents, some recent abductees in ICE raids. “They died of seizure and heart failure, stroke, respiratory failure, tuberculosis or suicide,” or reported neglect, notes the Guardian.
The shootings reflect the broad portrait of US residents–Good, a white, 37-year old mother of three; Porter, a Black 43-year-old father of two; Moncada and Zambrano-Contreras, Venezuelan. And, in familiar tones, the Trump administration has been quick to demonize all four.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem rushed to defend shooter Ross insisting it was an “act of domestic terrorism” by Good. Vice President JD Vance called Ross a “deranged leftist.” Moncada and Zambrano-Contreras were immediately labeled as affiliated with the Tren De Aragua gang, though Portland officials voiced distrust in ICE characterizations. A DHS spokesperson claimed Porter was an “active shooter” and the off-duty agent was “protecting his community,” contentions that infuriated Porter’s friends.
It was a solemn beginning to the new year, an exclamation point on the past 12 months.
The administration wants to control the Good investigation even as Minnesota officials say the federal government is impeding a state investigation. Vance claims agent Ross has “absolute immunity,” a point refuted by Harvard legal scholar Lawrence Tribe on MSNow with Lawrence O’Donnell. “State laws of assault continue to apply, even to a federal officer,” he noted. Outraged Minnesotans are calling for state prosecution as was done, with a conviction, for the police officer who killed George Floyd a short distance from where Good was murdered. Gov. Tim Walz says he wants the state to do a “full investigation.”
Porter’s friends are pushing for justice for Porter. Los Angeles County is “reviewing Porter’s killing,” though, the Los Angeles Times adds, “it sometimes takes years for the agency to determine if a deadly use of force constitutes a crime.” While Los Angeles is a “sanctuary city,” the LA Police Department is notorious for supporting and defending ICE and other federal immigration agents and constraining community protesters instead.
Venezuela, of course, was the other high-profile calamity of the week. Trump’s January 3 military invasion of Venezuela, kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. Up to 100 people, including civilians were killed, Venezuelan officials report. The US also bombed a medical warehouse, science labs, and an apartment complex, along with other sites in Caracas.
The long-planned assault followed months of extrajudicial bombings of boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific that have executed at least 115 people since September—like the invasion, in violation of international and US law, and without congressional authorization.
It was a solemn beginning to the new year, an exclamation point on the past 12 months. The Trump administration has carried out the most sustained assault on constitutional norms, dispatching of troops to threaten Americans in numerous cities, weaponization of the Justice Department and programs to punish political enemies and entire Democratic-run states, shredding of decades of healthcare standards that have saved millions of lives, and so much more.
It’s hard to even get more appalled. But the convergence of the emergence of a new American colonial empire abroad with the deadly escalation of Trump’s cruel, racist anti-immigrant program, is what made the week “truly terrifying.”
Many people on social media searched for analogs in recent US history. For this aging lefty who lived through and participated in frequent protests against the Vietnam war, President Ronald Reagan’s sponsoring of military coups and mercenary armies in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the disastrous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, I dredged up one comparison.
On April 28, 1970, President Richard Nixon invaded Cambodia with combat troops, an enormous widening of the Southeast Asia war he had pledged to end. A week later on May 4, following days of protests, the Ohio National Guard fired 67 rounds in 13 seconds at student protesters at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four students and wounding nine more. I huddled around the radio listening to the accounts on Pacifica’s KPFA-FM with three roommates, thinking the world had dramatically changed in our lives. Then I rushed off to join a raucous protest at Sonoma State University where I was enrolled.
Trump’s stranglehold on Republican members of Congress is weakening.
Many parallels to that time with this moment exist. There had been years of rallies and marches protesting Nixon and President Lyndon Johnson’s war before him. Nixon was elected promising a secret plan to conclude the long Vietnam War while covertly sabotaging a long-delayed Johnson plan to initiate new peace talks. Trump campaigned as a “peace” advocate, pledging to end “forever wars,” and begging for a Nobel Peace Prize before launching the most unchecked expansion of US colonialism in more than a century.
The arrogant Nixon was, arguably, the most lawless president in US history to that point, before being finally forced to resign. Trump has proven to be far worse, engaging in monarchical dictates and policies, running roughshod over Congress, defying the courts, staging an insurrection at the US Capitol attempting to overturn the 2020 election, and now scheming how to subvert the 2026 and 2028 elections.
On the two arenas of the past week, Trump and his cabal are promising more. Trump has openly threatened to expand military operations to Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, and Greenland. “I don’t need international law,” Trump told the New York Times. He will only be constrained, he said, by his “own morality.”
Vance has intensified his increasingly desperate rhetoric to defend the murder of Good; the administration recognizes they have lost public support, as millions have viewed the damning video evidence. Going on the attack, as Trump always requires when challenged, Vance boasts the administration has doubled its Gestapo-style police force to over 22,000, and plans to send ICE agents “door to door,” in coming months, mimicking the odious practices of past dictatorships. Trump has also threatened, again, to invoke the Insurrection Act to send the military to American cities to combat protesters.
Both Nixon and Trump met massive opposition. Anti-Vietnam War marches mushroomed, with over half a million people joining a November 1969 march on Washington. I remember driving overnight from Los Angeles to San Francisco to march with 250,000 others across the city that same day. The repeated mobilizations, augmenting battlefield defeats in Vietnam, ultimately coerced the US to end its war.
Trump has faced similar growing resistance. Up to 8 million Americans joined “No Kings” rallies and marches in June and October last year. And in the two days since the Minneapolis murder, thousands have turned out in spontaneous protests in many cities and smaller communities including Asheville, North Carolina, Boston, Buffalo, Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Colorado Springs. Colorado, Columbus, Ohio, Dallas, Dayton, Ohio, Denver, Durham, North Carolina, Los Angeles, Merrimack, New Hampshire, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Providence, Rhode Island, Seattle, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and repeatedly in Minneapolis.
Trump’s stranglehold on Republican members of Congress is weakening. Trump lost two significant votes in Congress on January 7. Overriding House GOP leaders, 17 Republicans joined Democrats in the House to pass legislation to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies for three years as millions of Americans are facing calamitous increases in healthcare coverage due to GOP obstruction in the fall.
In the Senate, five Republicans joined in a “rare bipartisan rebuke of the White House” to set up a War Powers Resolution vote to require congressional approval for Trump’s militarism in Venezuela and elsewhere. Incensed by the defiance, Trump called for the defeat of the five Republicans. Both actions face a difficult outcome, but the votes are significant. It shows Republicans are worried about the approaching midterm elections in November, following sweeping losses last year.
A wounded Trump, inclined to step up his callous attacks and lawlessness, is “truly terrifying” as National Nurse United’s Maharaj noted. Responding, NNU lobbied for the ACA subsidy vote, condemned the Venezuela invasion and Good’s murder, and had members at the San Francisco protests. Nurses are among the rapidly expanding mass movement needed to protect democracy, human rights, and all who live here.
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ICE Is a Domestic Terror Threat
The agents who shot Renee Nicole Good shot her because they knew they could; they shot her because the Trump administration has specifically and purposely empowered law enforcement to act without impunity or care.
Jan 08, 2026
On January 7, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent murdered Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. Immediately, the Trump administration sprang into action to propagandize the incident. Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed that the woman “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed, “It was an act of domestic terrorism.”
President Donald Trump posted via Truth Social:
The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital. The situation is being studied, in its entirety, but the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis. They are just trying to do the job of MAKING AMERICA SAFE. We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate!
This is a national tragedy. A young woman, a US citizen acting as a “legal observer” of federal agents, is now dead. A completely avoidable death if only ICE officers could exercise any level of restraint. If only the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wasn’t actively invading Minneapolis and indiscriminately targeting its residents—citizens and immigrants alike. If only the Trump administration gave a singular fuck about America.
Even after shooting Good, ICE agents refused to allow a doctor who was at the scene to provide aid. When an ambulance arrived 15 minutes later, they were blocked by ICE vehicles. They harassed her, shot her, and if there was even the faintest possibility that she might have lived, they took that away from her too.
In moments like this, we must remember that in democracies like the US there are four systems of checks and balances: In addition to the executive, judicial, and the legislative, there is the people.
The Trump administration is trying desperately to politicize her murder to further attack their political enemies. They kill an innocent woman and then use her death to villainize the people protesting her killer.
There is ample video evidence showing that Good was driving away slowly. None of the agents—who, to be clear, had no right to harass or intimidate her in the first place—were even remotely in danger. They simply shot her because they knew they could. They shot her because the Trump administration has specifically and purposely empowered law enforcement to act without impunity or care.
Don’t forget, President Trump has explicitly told law enforcement: “Please don’t be too nice. Like when you guys put somebody in the car, and you're protecting their head, you know, the way you put your hand over. I said, 'You can take the hand away, OK?" For Trump, it doesn’t make a difference whether the person has been convicted or is merely suspected. He chooses and promotes violence at every turn.
What’s particularly alarming here is how, despite the abundance of video evidence and eye-witness testimonies, the Trump administration insists on lying. This is literal fascism. To quote George Orwell’s famous 1984, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
And it’s not just the Trump administration. Conservative commentators are also amplifying this obvious falsehood. Megyn Kelly lies, “This cop almost got run over by this woman, who accelerated into him.” Matt Walsh blames the “protestor” and the “Democrats who’ve been fomenting chaos and violence against ICE for months.” Elon Musk, whose Twitter-X is the social media propaganda wing of the Trump administration, backs the ICE agent: “Attempting to murder them with a car requires self-defense.”
Even in this instance, where the evidence against their propaganda is staggering; where the murdered person was a white US citizen; and where telling the truth would have been advantageous for them, they lie. If the Trump administration was even remotely competent, they could have used this moment to hold this one ICE agent accountable for his crimes and avoid the protest that their lies are provoking. They could have exploited Good’s death to feign the appearance of being a legitimate, rule-based government. But they couldn’t even do that. Driven solely by arrogance, narcissism, and unmitigated contempt for anyone they consider part of the “enemy within,” they can never accept fault.
The Trump administration has given up any pretext of being a democracy bound to the Constitution. They demonstrated this when they kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and imposed colonial rule on Venezuela. And they demonstrated it Wednesday domestically against its own citizens. They will lie at every moment. They will resort to violence at every moment. They will kill you if you show any level of resistance.
In this moment, we cannot allow ourselves to be scared into submission. Elected officials, Americans, immigrants, anyone who cares about democracy, all of us need to stand up against this threat.
But the steps we take have to be productive. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, for instance, is correct to call out DHS’s “propaganda machine.” However, sending in the National Guard immediately after an armed federal agent kills an innocent woman will work to silence and suppress protest. Insisting that “they’re there to protect you and protect your constitutional rights” doesn’t change this dynamic. Walz is not meeting the moment.
Part of what people are protesting here isn’t simply this one act of state terrorism. They are protesting the entire monopolization of force by those who were elected to protect the people. They are protesting indiscriminate violence by militarized law enforcement. They are protesting ICE’s domestic terrorism.
This protest is not only righteous, but morality and justice demand it. In moments like this, we must remember that in democracies like the US there are four systems of checks and balances: In addition to the executive, judicial, and the legislative, there is the people. We are the ultimate check against state-sanctioned terrorism. We must be that today.
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