‘Good work’: Laura Ingraham lauds ICE agent who threw protesting Democratic candidate to the ground

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Fox News host Laura Ingraham praised an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent for throwing a Democratic congressional candidate to the ground, calling it ‘good work’ on her TV show.

Kat Abughazaleh, a progressive influencer running for Illinois’ ninth district, was thrown to the ground by one of the ICE agents in the morning of September 19, during a protest outside an ICE facility in Broadway, Illinois, near Chicago.

The agents, who were wearing masks and full tactical gear, later cleared the area. 

Abughazaleh later took to X (formerly Twitter), condemning the act. “This is what it looks like when ICE violates our First Amendment rights,” she tweeted, along with a video of the incident.

Laura Ingraham commends ICE agent

On her show, 'The Ingraham Angle', the host mentioned an immigration protest in New York before she turned her attention to Illinois, where she discussed the protest. 

"A similar situation in Chicago today, where absolutely unhinged agitators worked to form a blockade – they don’t have actual jobs, but that is their job – in front of an ICE facility, including a Democrat congressional candidate who was thrown to the ground by an ICE agent. Good work."

A surge in immigration raids under Donald Trump

This follows the surge in immigration raids across the country under Donald Trump, who has often threatened to send the National Guard to Chicago to fight crime. 

On September 6, he posted a meme on his Truth Social handle, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning… Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” referring to the Department of Defence, which was recently changed to Department of War.

The post shows Trump as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore from the film 'Apocalypse Now' (1979), played by Robert Duvall, best known for the iconic dialogue, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” where napalm is changed to deportation in Trump’s version. 

Since the deployment of National Guard troops to Washington, DC, on the pretext of a crime crackdown, he has threatened to do the same to other cities, including Chicago, calling it an ‘obligation’.

“When I watch television last night, and I’m watching the news and I see that nine people were killed in Chicago and 54 were badly wounded with bullets, I say, ‘That’s not our country. We have to do something,” he said, referring to shootings in the city over Labor Day weekend.

Legal criticisms over deployment of National Guard troops

Trump’s use of the National Guard has even faced legal criticism, when a federal judge ruled that the president’s deployment of troops to Los Angeles this summer to tackle protests was illegal. 

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker condemned the deployment of troops as having nothing to do with crime and vowed to challenge it in court.