ICE & The Battle for Minnesota
featuring Oliver Laughland
Renowned Investigative Journalist on ICE
Thursday, February 12th, 3-4pm EST, on Zoom
Oliver Laughland is the award-winning Southern Bureau Chief and investigations correspondent for The Guardian’s U.S. edition. Laughland’s reporting has meticulously documented the weeks leading up to the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renée Good by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis and provides a thorough account into the Trump Administration's plan in Minneapolis and how it has evolved. His dispatches, completed while traveling with residents and “ICE watcher” groups who challenged enforcement tactics, reveal how deportation operations unfold in cities across the U.S. and the real human consequences they produce. Beyond Minnesota, Laughland has uncovered how immigrants “disappear” in ICE detention facilities into Louisiana's “Black Hole.”
About the Speaker
Oliver Laughland is the Southern Bureau Chief and investigations correspondent for The Guardian’s U.S. edition, based in New Orleans, where he leads enterprise reporting on immigration enforcement, civil liberties, and the human impact of federal policy. His work has garnered major journalism honors, including a Scripps Howard award, multiple Edward R. Murrow awards, and Amnesty International human-rights reporting prizes, and he has been named a finalist for top industry awards such as the Peabody, an Emmy, and the Goldsmith investigative reporting prize.
Laughland’s reporting has repeatedly broken through the noise on some of the most consequential stories in the U.S. today. He documented the weeks leading up to the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renée Good by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, chronicled the rise of community resistance and sustained protests in the face of aggressive enforcement tactics, and followed families navigating the deportation system from Louisiana to Chicago and beyond. His immersive dispatches and data-driven investigations have shaped national understanding of how immigration policy unfolds on the ground.
Recent Articles
A week of ICE and outrage in Minneapolis
A frontline account from Minneapolis tracing the days leading up to the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renée Good by federal immigration agents, the thousands of arrests tied to the ICE surge, and the community resistance that emerged in response to what many residents call an unprecedented enforcement operation.
‘They never told me where I was going’: a family falls into Louisiana’s ‘black hole’ of deportation
An immersive narrative following a mother and her US citizen children — including one with stage-4 cancer — as they are moved through the immigration detention and deportation system in Louisiana, exposing gaps in due process and the human consequences of rapid deportation tactics.
Federal agents use teargas and pepper balls to break up Chicago ICE protest
Reporting from Chicago on federal agents deploying teargas and pepper balls to disperse protesters opposing immigration enforcement operations there, capturing how enforcement actions and community pushback intersect outside Minneapolis.