Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on How He Fought ICE’s Messaging War
Question Everything
Brian Reed
4.6 • 707 Ratings
🗓️ 29 January 2026
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As ICE agents have continued to threaten and kill people in Minneapolis and Minnesota’s governor and other state officials plead with the agency to leave, we share an interview with the governor of another state that was recently targeted by ICE: JB Pritzker of Illinois.
In October, as ICE agents were descending on Chicago in “Operation Midway Blitz”, Ben Smith and Max Tani of the Mixed Signals podcast from Semafor spoke to Governor Pritzker about the novel communications tactics he was using to combat ICE’s incursion into his city. Eventually he was successful in stopping President Trump from sending in National Guard troops, and Border Patrol agents left the city.
It was an urgent and timely conversation with lots of significance as we watch a similar situation unfold daily in Minnesota.
Thanks to Semafor for letting us share this interview with you. Find all episodes of Mixed Signals here.
Sign up for Semafor Media’s Sunday newsletter here.
The hosts are on X: @semaforben, @maxwelltani
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | people in Minneapolis are afraid to go to the grocery to send their children to school. I'm not just talking about immigrants. People throughout the Twin Cities are worried they could run into a cloud of tear gas or be detained for no reason as ice continues its violent operations there. |
| 0:23.2 | In the last several weeks, ICE agents have shot and killed two citizens, 37-year-old ICU nurse |
| 0:29.0 | Alex Pretty and 37-year-old mom, Renee Good. After both deaths, the Trump administration quickly |
| 0:35.7 | started making up stories about what had happened and about the victims, calling pretty and good domestic terrorists who are trying to kill ICE agents. |
| 0:45.4 | Cell phone videos and testimonies from eyewitnesses show that those claims are not true. |
| 0:50.1 | But it's all part of a concerted effort by the administration to control the narrative. |
| 0:55.3 | Given the level of emergency, this situation has reached, with masked federal officers killing |
| 1:00.3 | Americans on the street. |
| 1:02.3 | Here at the show, we've been turning our focus to ICE's assault and how much of it relies on them |
| 1:07.1 | trying to bury the truth. |
| 1:09.2 | Last week, I talked to Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell about his reporting on ICE's |
| 1:13.9 | internal propaganda unit. Go give that a listen if you haven't already. Drew got a hold of |
| 1:18.6 | thousands of internal chats between ICE employees about their social video production and |
| 1:23.8 | strategy that really give a picture of how we've gotten to where we are. |
| 1:28.0 | Next week, we have a story that our team has been reporting for months about a journalist |
| 1:32.0 | ICE retaliated against after he was covering their raids on the ground. |
| 1:36.5 | And this week, an interview with the governor of another state that was targeted by ICE |
| 1:41.4 | not too long ago, where he gets into the tactics he used to fight |
| 1:45.1 | the agency's messaging. He was ultimately successful in stopping President Trump from sending |
| 1:50.0 | in National Guard troops to his state. This is Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. |
| 1:56.0 | Donald Trump is using National Guard and other troops as a way to frighten the people of the United States |
| 2:03.3 | in great American cities. And that's not what people signed up for. |
... |
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