After President Donald Trump issued new guidance allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to raid “sensitive locations” — including schools, churches, and hospitals — right-wing media jumped to his defense by fearmongering that murderers, gang members, rapists, and pedophiles are hiding out in these spaces. One host defended raids on churches by going so far as to suggest that “serial killers, a lot of them, are churchgoers.”
Andrea Austria / Media Matters
Research/Study
Right-wing media figures defend Trump policy allowing ICE arrests at schools, churches, and hospitals
Newsmax host Greg Kelly: “Serial killers, a lot of them, are churchgoers”
Written by Noah Dowe & Torri Lonergan
Published
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Trump’s policy enables ICE to make arrests at “sensitive locations” — including schools, churches, hospitals, and disaster areas
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- Shortly after his inauguration, Trump rescinded a Biden administration restriction which prevented ICE from launching raids in areas where “children gather,” as well as “disaster or emergency relief sites, and social services establishments.” The Biden administration’s guidance had prohibited ICE from conducting operations “in or near a location that would limit peoples’ access to ‘essential’ services or activities.” [NPR, 1/21/25; PBS, 1/22/25]
- According to the nonprofit National Immigration Law Center, “The rescission will have a chilling effect on immigrant communities now afraid to access medical care, education, childcare, and places of worship for fear that they or a loved one will be ripped away from the community.” The new DHS guidance has already resulted in a wave of fear being reported across Latino and migrant communities, with pastors across the nation “nervous about how the sensitive locations change could affect activities, ESL classes, and food pantries.” [National Immigration Law Center, 1/21/25; Christianity Today, 1/27/25]
- During Trump’s first term, ICE repeatedly targeted and arrested parents just before or after they dropped their children off for school. Additionally, ICE raids across Mississippi worksites in 2019, scheduled on the first day of school that year, left many children stranded and reliant on volunteers to provide them food and shelter. [Los Angeles Times, 3/3/17; USA Today, 2/27/20; Newsweek, 8/8/19]
- NBC News reported that ICE arrested 1,179 immigrants on Sunday alone, and nearly half those arrested were “nonviolent offenders or people who have not committed any criminal offense other than crossing the border illegally.” The Trump administration and right-wing media have repeatedly insisted that mass deportations would focus on “the worst of the worst,” yet only eight of those arrested Sunday were considered “Worst Criminals Arrested” and 566 had no criminal record whatsoever. [NBC News, 1/27/25; The Associated Press, 11/11/24; Media Matters, 11/18/24]
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Right-wing media defended Trump’s policy by fearmongering about migrant criminals hiding in schools and places of worship
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- Fox host Jesse Watters defended ICE targeting worshippers by claiming “you could be doing a satanic ritual — you could be slitting a goat's throat and guzzling its blood in the middle of nowhere — and ICE can't grab you.” Watters also defended ICE raiding schools, complaining that “if there is an international sex trafficker in this country illegally, but he’s hanging out by a school, Biden said you can’t pick him up.” Watters also bemoaned that ICE had been barred from arresting migrants at disaster areas and weddings. [Fox News, The Five, 1/22/25]
- Watters later suggested that under Biden’s guidance, “a criminal alien could be serving fries at your daughter’s school cafeteria and ICE would not be able to get them. A migrant trafficker could be luring little girls into his van at a playground and ICE could not touch them.” Watters added, “Even if a Biden migrant stormed the capitol on January 6, sorry, it’s a protest. ICE is not allowed to arrest them.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 1/22/25]
- Newsmax host Greg Kelly defended ICE targeting churches by saying “serial killers, a lot of them, are churchgoers.” Kelly argued, “You can't have any place be a safe harbor because then the illegals would go there, illegal criminals would go there. And, oh, by the way, it's true that criminals do show up in church sometimes, in schools, in hospitals.” [Newsmax, Greg Kelly Reports, 1/23/25]
- One America News host Matt Gaetz declared that “no space in America should be an amnesty space.” Gaetz, a former member of Congress, compared school officials who deny entrance to ICE to segregationist leaders, declaring: “George Wallace was wrong to stand in front of the schoolhouse to block desegregation, and any governor or school superintendent or principal who stands in front of Tom Homan, our border czar, they’ll get what’s coming to them — lawfully, legally, of course.” [One America News, The Matt Gaetz Show, 1/22/25]
- Infowars host Alex Jones defended the new Trump policy, proclaiming that some churches are “globalist bastions of DEI crap” and “not above the law.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 1/22/25]
- Newsmax host Rob Finnerty: “If a child rapist or a murderer was sitting next to you at church on Sunday, would you be offended at all, honestly, if ICE agents came right in during the service and arrested that person right then and there?” As Finnerty spoke, a chyron underneath him read: “Liberal Media Wants You To Think Grandma Will Be Arrested At Church.” [Newsmax, Finnerty, 1/27/25]
- Fox host Jeanine Pirro defended ICE entering schools, saying, “As if I'd rather have the pedophile in the school than arrested.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 1/28/25]
- Right-wing influencer “Insurrection Barbie” argued that “you have r*pists and murderers and child molesters hide in schools and churches and weddings and any other place that is exempt from enforcement. So the only way to apprehend them is to go into these spaces and scare communities.” [Twitter/X, 1/24/25]
- MAGA podcaster Laura Loomer raged that schools “are putting American children at risk by evading immigration orders, and providing a safe haven for illegal alien children, whose parents are criminals.” [Twitter/X, 1/26/25]
- Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik: “All the schools and hospitals putting out memos that they’re gonna protect illegals are just telling on themselves. They should all be placed on ICE’s route.” [Twitter/X, 1/26/25]
- Fox host Laura Ingraham brushed off “immigration sob stories,” complaining that “every time enforcement is actually carried out or ramped up it's always, you know, the valedictorian.” Ingraham added: “First of all, if you’re in the country illegally, and especially if you’re a criminal, you are a deportable alien under U.S. law.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 1/27/25]
- Watters proclaimed that “if we're doing an ICE raid at school, we're protecting the kids at the school.” He continued, “We're taking out a rapist from the cafeteria. That's how we have to look at this.” [Fox News, The Five, 1/27/25]
- Fox host Brian Kilmeade claimed “the reason why they’re going into high schools is because these gang members lie about their age, they go into school … and then they terrorize that school.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 1/27/25]
- Newsmax host Chris Plante compared churches being a safe place for migrants to Hamas hiding weapons in mosques and hospitals. Plante stated, “Here's the reality, it's like Hamas uses mosques and hospitals and schools to store their weapons and their murderers. The left in the United States has for years been using churches with radical left wing pastors, and so on, to provide sanctuary to large numbers of illegal aliens." Plante continued, “They're not at mass. They're holed up in the basement because the Democrats said, ‘oh, you can't get people for breaking the law in church because they're such good churchgoing people.’” [Newsmax, Chris Plante: The Right Squad, 1/28/25]