The Tribune's coverage of Immigration Enforcement isn't journalism. It's propaganda
Since Operation Midway Blitz, the federal government’s crackdown on illegal immigration in the Chicago area, began this past fall, the Chicago Tribune has transformed itself into an anti-ICE propaganda rag.
The Tribune's daily print circulation has fallen to 70,000 on weekdays — far less than 660,000 print subscribers it was boasted 20 years ago. The number of digital subscriptions for the Tribune are undoubtedly much higher, but how many of those subscribers are “ghost readers,” that is, people who subscribe but rarely log in?
Since the mid-1990s, the Tribune has been moving further and further to the left, as has its chief competitor, the Sun-Times.
As for the Tribune, it seems to believe the way to stop the bleeding is to double down on appealing to Chicago’s far-left, which is comprised mostly of what WIND Radio’s Dan Proft calls the AWFLs, the Angry White Female Leftists.
Even in a deep-blue city like Chicago, that’s not a big audience. And perhaps all of the AWFLs already hold subscriptions.
And it’s a very safe assumption that few illegals have been enticed to subscribe to the Tribune since it went deep down the anti-ICE rabbit hole.
64 Days
The lead story from the Tribune's final Sunday edition of 2025 ties up its editorial strategy in a neat, but ugly, bow: “64 days in Chicago: The story of Operation Midway Blitz,” written by Andrew Carter, Carol Kubzansky — and two of Chicago's most biased reporters, Laura Rodriguez Presa and Gregory Royal Pratt.
It is filled with, to use an old newspaper term, sob sister tales. And while it’s impossible not to feel some sympathy with many of the personal stories of the illegals who have been arrested by ICE, remember, by being in the country illegally, they are breaking the law.
What the Tribune’s Fabulist Foursome mostly leaves out of its cloying magnum dopus is context. Paragraph after paragraph, an astute reader who follows all sides of the news will notice “64 days in Chicago” presents just one side of the story.
One huge whiff is the one sided reporting where the four authors of the story repeatedly mention the use of pepper balls and tear gas by federal officials as they perform their duties, but they omit that these agents are routinely, and arguably illegally, harassed by left-wing agitators.
Sanctuary laws
Chicago and Illinois lean on sanctuary city laws and the TRUST Act that prevent ICE from easily going after what border czar Tom Homan calls the worst of the worst. Where does someone typically find such people? In jails and prisons, of course. However, local Democratic officials, including Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, refuse to allow ICE and Customs and Border Patrol officers inside Illinois correctional facilities.
Homan has told Blue state officials, “let us in the jails.”
According to the Department of Homeland Security, there are over 4,000 criminal illegal aliens currently in jail or prison in Illinois. Among these incarcerated individuals are murderers and sexual predators.
DHS explained last month:
“Governor Pritzker and his fellow Illinois sanctuary politicians are releasing murderers, pedophiles, and kidnappers back into our neighborhoods and putting American lives at risk. We are calling on Governor Pritzker and his administration to stop this dangerous derangement and commit to honoring the ICE arrest detainers of the more than 4,000 criminal illegal aliens in Illinois’ custody. It is common sense. Criminal illegal aliens should not be released back onto our streets to terrorize more innocent Americans,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
DHS says that since President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, “1,768 criminal illegal aliens” have been released by Illinois officials into the public.
The Tribune routinely neglects to mention that incarcerated criminals in Illinois are easy to detain. Catching fish at a well-stocked trout farm is more of a challenge.
Homan has been forced by Illinois’ Democratic politicians to find illegals the hard way — on the streets.
Rules for Radicals
Leading the anti-illegal raids in Chicago and other cities is Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino.
There have been two large waves of Operation Midway Blitz, the first began in late September and lasted about six weeks, the second started in December. Although Bovino says, “We never left, guys.” As for the chief, particularly on social media, the Tribune, its writers, as well as the Chicago Sun-Times, are using an old Saul Alinsky Rules of Radicals tactic on him.
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
Which means Bovino, as if he is a Batman villain — “Hey, Commissioner Gordon, the Joker is back in town” — is the media’s evil personification of ICE and CBP activity in Chicago.
Or as they refer to it as, and indeed Pratt and company did so in their "64 Days" article, “a federal incursion.”
Have these propagandists heard of the Supremacy Clause in the U.S. Constitution? Do they know that the federal government has jurisdiction over immigration? Do they even care?
Not everyone in Illinois is a leftist
Here is another bit of context the writers left out. While Donald Trump performed poorly in Chicago and Cook County in the 2024 election, elsewhere in Illinois he did not. Trump, despite the mistaken belief that Illinois is a “deep blue” state, won 43 percent of the Land of Lincoln vote. Illegal immigration was a major issue in the presidential campaign. Fighting back against the aliens’ incursion is what many Illinoisans voted for in 2024.
What is the goal of the Tribune’s illegal migrant coverage? It is probably hoping for a Pulitzer Prize and then using that win to bolster its anemic base of subscribers. But like the Academy Awards, many people — paying customers, mostly — tuned them out years ago.
And a Pulitzer won’t save the Tribune from its fate, one that is probably coming soon: Going out of business.
Here is someone who certainly deserves a Pulitzer, Nick Shirley, whose video coverage on X about widespread public aid fraud in Minnesota has attracted over 100 million viewers. What he spent on that video is probably less than what the Chicago Tribune spends daily on its annoying pop-up ads.
Meanwhile, the Tribune and other dead-tree media outlets blame online competition for their demise. Nonetheless, to paraphrase new wave rocker Graham Parker, when he was singing about his record company, which he called a dinosaur, the collective mainstream media has a small brain — and it is unwilling to learn.
Once you needed a printing press or access to one to be a journalist. But as Andrew Breitbart observed, “All you need is a phone for journalism.”
Having an open mind and not being burdened by an agenda helps a lot too.
