Nekima Levy Armstrong Jailed After Protesting ICE Official Who Also Serves as Pastor in St. Paul

[Uncle Joe]

The Justice Department said Thursday that it had arrested three people in Minnesota who interrupted a church service in St. Paul to protest a pastor's role as a local ICE official. The activists involved in the protest now face charges under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a law written to protect abortion clinics.

One of the arrestees, civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, had her appearance digitally altered in a photo posted online by the White House to make it look like she was crying while handcuffed. Her attorney, Jordan Kushner, tells Democracy Now! that Justice Department officials refused to let Levy Armstrong turn herself in, instead demanding an arrest at the hotel where she was staying. "This was their trophy," says Kushner, who adds that the government "used more manipulative tactics to keep her in jail" even though "no one is detained in a case like this."

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. MaddowBlog-White House pushes manipulated image of arrest of Minnesota civil rights attorney

As one prominent political scientist summarized, “We are at Stalinesque levels of propaganda.”

We’re all accustomed to White House deceptions, but pushing an AI-manipulated image — and then bragging about it — is qualitatively worse than the usual nonsense.

When there’s no real difference between the White House and your annoying friend on facebook who pushes AI trash, there’s a problem.

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-01-23T18:15:00.053Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/white-house-pushes-manipulated-image-of-arrest-of-minnesota-civil-rights-attorney

Four days later, federal agents arrested three of those involved with the protest, including a civil rights attorney named Nekima Levy Armstrong.

That the White House celebrated Levy Armstrong’s arrest was not surprising. What mattered, however, is how the White House celebrated the development. The Associated Press reported:

On its official X page, the White House shared an image of Nekima Levy Armstrong that showed her in tears with her arms behind her back, standing in front of someone wearing a badge around their neck.

The problem? Levy Armstrong wasn’t actually crying. The image was manipulated to make the moment more dramatic than it actually was. … The original image, which shows Levy Armstrong with a neutral expression, was altered to make her appear emotional.

A related report in The New York Times noted that the newspaper ran the image through an artificial intelligence detection system that concluded the White House’s version of the photo “showed signs of manipulation.”....

The image of Levy Armstrong was qualitatively different: It was designed to mislead. Don Moynihan, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, noted via Bluesky, “This is the first example I’ve seen of an American government using AI to meaningfully misrepresent actual events with the intent to deceive the public. We are at Stalinesque levels of propaganda.”....

But in 2026, the White House is no better than that annoying guy you went to high school with or that weird uncle who consumes conservative media all day. The president and his team, like your Facebook friends, have no qualms about spreading manipulated content without regard for accuracy.

The difference, of course, is that the White House knows it’s promoting deceptions, contributing to an information landscape in which Americans no longer know who or what to believe.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. Why Trump's altered image of an anti-ICE protester crosses a new line

The Trump administration is pioneering a new frontier in propaganda — and it’s meant to crush the resistance.

Why Trump’s altered image of an anti-ICE protester crosses a new line

The Trump administration is pioneering a new frontier in propaganda — and it’s meant to crush the resistance.
www.ms.now/opinion/trum...

— Michael Markowitz (@markowitz.bsky.social) 2026-01-24T18:54:39.071Z

https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-white-house-altered-photo-ice-protester-armstrong

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in a post published Thursday on X, shared an image of the arrest of Nekima Levy Armstrong. Levy Armstrong participated in a protest inside a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, against crackdowns led by Immigration and Custom Enforcement. In the image, she displays a calm, neutral facial expression while she is guided by a law enforcement officer, her hands apparently handcuffed behind her back.

Just half an hour later, the White House released a similar image, but a couple of things were different. Levy Armstrong, who is Black, appears to have darker skin, and her face shows distress: She appears to be weeping, with strikingly prominent tears seemingly streaming down her face.

The second image appears to be altered, several news publications have found. The New York Times ran both images through an artificial intelligence detection system, and it concluded that the initial image was real but that the one released by the White House “showed signs of manipulation.” When asked by The Guardian whether the photo had been digitally altered, the White House sent a link to an X post by deputy communications director Kaelan Dorr that commented, “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.”

The Trump administration seems to have crossed yet another line in its assault on democracy. The White House has released manipulated images before, many of them generated by AI, but almost all of them are cartoonishly and obviously computer-generated. This is the first widely circulated manipulated image that I know of from the Trump administration that passes convincingly as a real photograph. This isn’t, as the administration tries to frame it, a “meme.” It’s a new frontier in propaganda, designed to deal yet another blow to functioning democracy......

While the NAACP said that Levy Armstrong and her fellow demonstrators were demonstrating peacefully, the White House claimed without providing evidence that she was “orchestrating church riots.” The altered image was meant to portray her as a cosplaying radical who broke the minute things got rough. The altered image also insinuated that Levy Armstrong regretted her actions or had lost her resolve. It invites the MAGA base to laugh at the weakness of its opponents and prompts the left to see its resistance as fragile and futile.

That the White House has done this unapologetically, even when called out by major news outlets, means we should expect this problem to continue — and likely to get worse. The problem goes far deeper than official communications about ICE, though. Under President Donald Trump, many federal government agencies cannot be expected to be truthful. But it’s equally disturbing that we have to expect that these agencies will blatantly lie in order to fulfill his quest to amass power and denigrate his enemies.