The Metro: ICE’s media machine and the voices going quiet

Robyn Vincent,

The Metro

March 5, 2026

The federal government is manufacturing content while real sources are going quiet. Journalist Maria Hinojosa on the federal government’s information war — and the cost of fighting back.

An image posted on ICE's Instagram page. A Washington Post investigation found federal officials embedded producers in immigration raids to manufacture viral content. At the same time, the federal government is subpoenaing people who criticize ICE online.

The Metro team has been noticing a chilling effect as we dig for answers and information: some sources who used to talk to us are not picking up. Community members, advocates, and elected officials are going quiet. But silence is only one side of the story. The other side is a deliberate wall of noise.

Washington Post reporters obtained thousands of internal Department of Homeland Security messages and found a taxpayer-funded media operation embedded in immigration raids. Producers were told to flag “cinematic scenes” for the camera. When someone arrested had no criminal record — and nearly 74% in ICE detention don’t, according to government data — officials were told to find something else “newsworthy.”

At the same time, DHS has sent hundreds of administrative subpoenas to Google, Meta, Reddit, and Discord demanding the identities of people who criticize ICE online.

Maria Hinojosa has spent decades fighting against the silence and the noise. The Pulitzer Prize-winning host of Latino USA and founder of Futuro Media joined Robyn Vincent to talk about the federal government’s information war on immigration.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

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Authors

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Robyn Vincent is the co-host of The Metro on WDET. She is an award-winning journalist, a lifelong listener of WDET, and a graduate of Wayne State University, where she studied journalism. Before returning home to Detroit, she was a reporter, producer, editor, and executive producer for NPR stations in the Mountain West, including her favorite Western station, KUNC. She received a national fellowship from Investigative Reporters and Editors for her investigative work that probed the unchecked power of sheriffs in Colorado. She was also the editor-in-chief of an alternative weekly newspaper in Wyoming, leading the paper to win its first national award for a series she directed tracing one reporter’s experience living and working with Syrian refugees. -