Hannah Critchfield

government was very determined to bring forth charges in this case.

We pored over court files and we found that when people were charged with this, more often than not, those cases fell apart.

Either they were acquitted or found not guilty at trial.

We approached DHS about our investigation and our findings, and they said they're taking appropriate and constitutional measures to uphold the rule of law.

They're protecting officers from dangerous rioters.

You know, the White House has said, look, we're defending heroic law enforcement officers who are trying to keep American communities safe.

We found that the government is silent after these cases resolve and the person is exonerated.

So oftentimes, protesters are called violent rioters, professional agitators, and they're accused of making physical contact in some way with agents.

But sometimes we found that video footage, you know,

showed that immigration agents would at times lay their hands on demonstrators first.

We spoke to federal prosecutors across the nation, and they said that they were facing intense pressure to charge demonstrators, bystanders, even if video evidence contradicts the statements that officers initially claim about what happened.

Or in situations where they wouldn't normally pursue federal charges, they believed that it wouldn't

rise to the level of prosecution.

Yeah, I mean, we shared our findings with the federal government and asked for comments.

You know, they...

strongly said that this is about protecting federal law enforcement and that the people who they are accusing are rioters, not people who are exercising free speech.

What our reporting shows is that we don't know exactly why the federal government is tweeting over a thousand times about assaults on federal officers, but...

By putting a bullseye on people who are accused of assault by the federal government publicly, it has the effect of chilling First Amendment expression.

And that is something that we saw in our conversations with people who had been accused publicly by the federal government of assault.

assaulting federal officers is that they are less likely to participate in protests and less likely to put themselves in situations where their name might be tracked.