First, we saw their faces: A man shielding someone who’d been pepper-sprayed and forced to the ground. A wide-eyed 5-year-old with a bunny-ear hat and a Spiderman backpack. A grandfather being led through the snow wearing only boxers, Crocs and a blanket. A woman behind the wheel of an SUV whose last recorded words were, “I’m not mad at you, dude.”
Later, we came to know their names: Alex Pretti, Liam Conejo Ramos, ChongLy Scott Thao and Renee Good.
And swiftly, we heard authorities’ accounts of who they were. But the Trump administration’s official versions of what occurred — challenged by numerous witness accounts, local officials and activists — haven’t quelled protests on the streets of Minneapolis or stopped mounting criticism of authorities’ aggressive tactics. And experts say the images of Pretti, Conejo, Thao and Good are a big reason why.
Even as the moments that first brought national attention to these four individuals have passed, the images have lingered — and they’re shaping the way some Americans see the Trump administration’s crackdown.
“What we’re seeing in Minneapolis is how powerful visuals tied to real people can shift public understanding almost instantly,” says Allissa Richardson, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School.
When thousands of federal authorities surged into Minnesota earlier this month, officials heralded the latest phase of their national immigration crackdown and its oft-touted mission: capturing the “worst of the worst.”
But a dramatically different narrative emerged with head-spinning speed over the past few weeks as journalists, bystanders and protesters shared images of what they witnessed.
Official accounts about what’s happening in Minnesota have often been swift and sharply worded.
Hours after US citizens Pretti and Good were shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis, Department of Homeland Security officials called them “domestic terrorists” who were trying to harm officers. A day after Thao, also a US citizen, was removed from his home and marched through the snow, a DHS spokeswoman said agents had taken him for questioning because he lived with two wanted sex offenders.
And after outraged school leaders shared photos of Conejo and said that authorities had used the little boy from Ecuador boy as “bait” to arrest his family, Trump administration officials denied that description. Then they lambasted Conejo’s father as an “illegal alien” who’d abandoned his son when federal officers closed in (In all four cases, the federal government’s assertions are fiercely disputed by families and representatives of Pretti, Conejo, Thao and Good).
Thao was returned home without charges. Conejo and his father are being held at a family detention center in Texas. And authorities say they’re investigating the two deadly shootings.
But as rapidly as federal authorities issued their initial statements, bystanders’ images showing what occurred circulated even faster on social media and in news reports.
“Instead of talking about immigration in the abstract,” Richardson wrote in an email to CNN, “these images make the stakes human and immediate.”
The photos and videos are part of a rich tradition of powerful images that have a far deeper impact than any written words or official statements can, says Ken Light, a professor of photojournalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
He points to two now-famous photos from the Vietnam War: the photo of children fleeing a napalm attack and the photo of a man being executed on a Saigon street.
“Those two pictures really shifted the attitude of Americans,” says Light, co-author of “Picturing Resistance: Moments and Movements of Social Change from the 1950s to Today.”
The same thing seems to be happening today, Light says, with one notable shift.
Before, it was primarily professional photographers’ images that were informing the public. That’s still occurring; the images of Thao being taken from his home, for example, circulated widely after Reuters photographers captured them. But now many everyday citizens are also documenting what they see and sharing it.
That was something many Americans started doing, he says, after cell phone footage of police killing George Floyd — also in Minneapolis — ignited a wave of protests and rekindled the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.
“It was the George Floyd moment that also made people realize that with their little cell phones, they could actually fight back, tell the truth, witness,” Light says. “And now in Minneapolis, you’re seeing it so many times, multiplied.”
Footage emerging from Minnesota today also recalls galvanizing moments from the civil rights movement, Black Lives Matter protests and the uproar over the first Trump administration’s family separations policy, according to Ralph Young, a professor at Temple University and author of “Dissent: History of an American Idea.”
“When you see a picture of it, that has more of an emotional impact. Hearing about it is an intellectual thing. And then seeing it just hits you that this is a tragedy,” Young says.
Reactions to the photo of Conejo, he says, remind him of how he felt when he saw the photo of a young child being separated from her mother at the border in 2018.
“When I saw that, I just wanted to cry,” he says. “I have grandchildren that age, and you know, it just gets you.”
Something caught Kate Starbird’s attention as soon as she started looking at the data after Pretti’s shooting death this past weekend.
On X, the narratives getting the most engagement about Pretti weren’t echoing the federal government’s talking points, according to Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington and co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public.
“It’s very striking to see that the top 10 posts about Alex Pretti are sympathetic to him,” she told CNN a day after the shooting.
A deeper data analysis led Starbird to reach this conclusion in a Substack post: “The right was having trouble controlling the narrative, even on their home turf on X.”
One possible reason why: “There’s just so much visual evidence of what’s happening. And that evidence is so quickly surfaced and disseminated, in this case before the propaganda machines can start to do their spinning work,” Starbird says.
When it comes to images and immigration, many social media users are accustomed to seeing the issue presented through a very different frame, according to Nina Lutz, a doctoral student and researcher who works with Starbird and studies participatory visual culture.
For example, Lutz and other researchers analyzed more than 1,000 TikToks and images from X around anti-immigrant rhetoric that circulated in 2024 and found more than 60% of the posts supported the claim that immigrants are violent criminals making US cities unsafe.
She’s been observing recent social media conversations around events in Minnesota and noticing different trends emerging.
“The image of the little boy and the image of the older man being led out of his home, those two still images, I think, are iconic images coming from this moment,” she says. But that doesn’t mean they’re being shared with the same point of view.
Numerous influencers, celebrities and politicians blasted the 5-year-old’s photos across social media with indignant messages.
“It’s horrifying to think of this precious child ripped from his home and put in a detention center. His classmates are traumatized to see their friend suddenly disappear,” the YouTube star and children’s educator known as Ms. Rachel posted on Instagram. “We must lead with compassion and keep families together. The children are watching. The children are scared. All children must be cherished and protected.”
But the same image elicited a different response from Vice President JD Vance, who cast blame on the boy’s father.
“So the story is that ICE detained a 5-year-old. Well, what are they supposed to do?” Vance said when asked about the photo during a visit to Minnesota. “Are they supposed to let a 5-year-old child freeze to death? Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America?”
As the reactions to footage shared after Good’s shooting also showed, different people can view the same image in very different ways.
So, in an age when many people live in information silos and echo chambers, are these images changing anyone’s minds?
“The polling suggests a narrative of overreach and over-aggression has clearly set in, with a growing volume of videos and images likely hardening those perceptions,” CNN’s Aaron Blake noted in an analysis over the weekend.
A Quinnipiac University poll found 82% of registered voters said they’d seen video of Good’s shooting.
“What’s clear is that the American people have come down decidedly against ICE and the administration’s defense of the agent’s actions,” Blake wrote.
A CNN poll found 56% of US adults said the ICE agent’s use of force in that shooting was “inappropriate,” compared to just 26% who said it was “appropriate.”
More data on this will likely emerge in the coming weeks once pollsters have a chance to ask Americans about Pretti’s shooting, and as the situation in Minnesota continues to evolve.
Federal authorities haven’t directly addressed the way many members of the American public are responding to the images they’re seeing from Minnesota. But Light, the Berkeley photojournalism professor, says recent comments from President Donald Trump and Vance acknowledging ICE sometimes makes mistakes seem to indicate they’re realizing the optics aren’t good.
“A few people in the administration are understanding that the power of these images really speaks to people,” Light says.
For their part, Minnesota state officials have been clear that the images many bystanders are recording are invaluable — and could even be used in criminal investigations.
“Carry your phone with you at all times,” Gov. Tim Walz said in an address earlier this month. “And if you see ICE in your neighborhood, take out that phone and hit record. Help us create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans — not just to establish a record for posterity, but to bank evidence for future prosecution.”
Ten days after Walz made those comments, cell phone videos showing multiple angles of Pretti’s shooting death were painting a picture that stood in sharp contrast to federal authorities’ descriptions of what happened.
“Thank God, thank God we have video,” Walz said.
