Student newsrooms across the Midwest are covering one of the most urgent stories on their campuses: immigration enforcement in their own communities, often while navigating risks themselves.
In Chicago, reporters at the Chicago Maroon, the University of Chicago’s student publication, built a public-facing map tracking sightings of federal immigration agents near campus as large-scale enforcement operations unfolded across the city. The Loyola Phoenix launched a similar tracker, asking readers to submit tips that reporters verify before publishing.
At the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Daily has dedicated ongoing coverage of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, reporting on enforcement operations and their impact on both students and the surrounding community.
The work is unfolding as federal immigration enforcement has escalated in visible ways. In the Chicago area, a September 2025 operation resulted in hundreds of arrests and clashes between federal agents and protesters outside an immigration facility. In Minnesota, a months-long federal deployment brought a surge of agents to the Twin Cities, prompting protests and widespread community concern.
For student journalists, covering those developments can mean navigating not only fast-moving news but also personal and professional risk — shaping what they report, how they report it and, in some cases, whether they publish at all.
Sam Hill, managing editor of the Minnesota Daily, said his newsroom prepared for the possibility that reporters could face volatile situations in the field.
“Students are affected the same as other folks,” Hill said. “There have been a lot of folks who have had families stopped or detained. There are a lot of students that have probably been stopped or taken away that we don’t know about, because ICE doesn’t publish things and people are afraid to talk to risk jeopardizing their own communities.”
For some student journalists, the risks are also personal.
When Kate Larroder became editor-in-chief of the Columbia Chronicle student newspaper last summer, she faced a challenge many of her peers couldn’t relate to. Larroder, who is from the Philippines, feared losing her student visa.
In June, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would be intensely vetting the social media accounts of international students. She was especially scared because she had written a story a few months earlier about safety worries expressed by international students under the Trump administration.
“I even debated whether to have that story taken down from the website, just because I was fearing for my safety,” said Larroder, a student at Columbia College Chicago.
The March 25, 2025, detention of Rümeysa Öztürk, an international student attending Tufts University in Massachusetts, who co-wrote an op-ed in the Tufts Daily about Palestine, increased Larroder’s fears.
“That really affected me as well, because when that news came out, I didn’t go out of my apartment for multiple days, and I was just working from home,” Larroder said. “I had to tell my advisor that I need to step away from anything immigration related, or anything basically covering the government.”
Immigration coverage in student outlets looks different, depending on factors like proximity to ICE activity and their campus’s international student population. Abe Hagood, assistant opinions editor and former staff writer at The Miami Student in Oxford, Ohio, wrote about the fears of international students amid the Trump administration’s increased immigration regulations.
“Traditionally, we’ve had a lot of international students,” Hagood said. “During the first Trump administration, that started really to plummet. Even before COVID, and especially after COVID, that really dropped, especially in students from China, and then it never came back. It’s still kind of decreasing now, and I was interested in how the students are reacting to ICE and the Trump administration.”
Hagood said it was difficult to find international students to interview for the story, as many of them are scared. While his source did not request anonymity, Hagood said The Miami Student’s staff would consider it for sensitive stories where sources may have safety concerns.
Dominic Coletti, student press program officer at the Foundation for Individual Rights, a nonprofit that defends free speech on college campuses, said the organization received various inquiries about anonymous sourcing in early 2025.
“A lot of the work that I do with student journalists is really part of that original core mission of defending free speech on campus,” Coletti said. “Because while the policies are coming from the federal government, and a lot of the impact is beyond just individual or beyond campuses, it’s still chilling expression in the pages of student newspapers on college quads and all across the higher ed space.”
Coverage at The News Record — the student news organization of the University of Cincinnati, which is less than an hour away from Miami University — has also largely focused on international students. Hajra Munir, editor-in-chief of The News Record, said the staff has reported on how federal immigration policies affect international students, including student activism in the broader Cincinnati community.
“I believe it’s important we are covering this issue like we would any other issue, despite it being politically charged and despite there being so many outside perspectives and voices kind of affecting this issue,” Munir said. “I think it’s important to highlight how this affects day-to-day lives for our students.”
Sofía Oyarzún, Larroder’s colleague and editor of La Crónica, the Chronicle’s Spanish language section, said it’s been “hard to ignore” the threats.
“I think we’re all very aware, because we come from families — immigrant families, or families with Latin heritage,” Oyarzún said. “I think the stories are kind of in front of us.”
A photojournalist, Oyarzún covered a protest at the Broadview Detention Center outside of Chicago that resulted in over 20 arrests and four police injuries. Reporting this story, Oyarzún said, pushed her into a new kind of student journalism, one that felt more “real” and challenged her to adapt as a reporter.
“That was my first time being in that kind of chaotic environment and taking photos in such a chaotic environment,” Oyarzún said. “I think I grew in a lot of ways at that protest because everyone next to me was being shoved to the ground or arrested.”
Oyarzún said she feels like she’s done her job when community members feel comfortable and in control when sharing their stories.
“If there’s any good we can contribute to society in a time right now, it’s to share the voices of people who feel unheard,” Oyarzún said.
Hannah Pajtis is a Philadelphia-based freelance journalist and editor-in-chief for The Hawk, the independent student-run news organization of Saint Joseph’s University.
