ICE activity is pushing readers to nonprofit news sites that cover immigrant communities

In our recent rankings of web traffic at the top local newspapers and public media outlets, there’s been a consistent trend: Wherever ICE unleashes its controversial deportation tactics, the audience’s attention follows. Operation Midway Blitz sent readers to Chicago’s WBEZ, Operation Charlotte’s Web did the same for Charlotte’s WFAE, and the chaos in Minneapolis led Minnesota Public Radio to the top of the traffic rankings.

For another class of digital publishers, nonprofit outlets, the effect can be even more intense, since some focus specifically on immigrant communities being targeted. Our latest nonprofit rankings — for October, November, and December 2025 — show that clearly.

— In October, the biggest percentage increase in traffic any site saw was at NepYork, a site that covers the Nepali community in New York City, where visits skyrocketed from around 20,000 to 289,000. (ICE deportations of Nepali citizens have been on the rise.) Other big gainers included The Maine Monitor (up 153%), California’s Fresnoland (up 152%), Fort Worth Report (up 51%), and The TRiiBE, a site about Black Chicago (up 107%).

— November’s biggest growth went to Sahan Journal, whose focus on Minnesota’s immigrant community has obviously drawn attention; visits were up an estimated 190% over October. It was also a strong month for sites like Mississippi Today (up 80%), Wisconsin’s Wausau Pilot & Review (up 44%), Oklahoma Watch (up 99%), and coastal Georgia’s The Current (up 105%).

— In December, visits to Massachusetts’ Brookline.News were up 380% from November’s total — going from 67,000 to 322,000 — pushing the site all the way to No. 36 on our rankings. That’s the result of the December 15 murder of MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, who was killed by the same man who had opened fire on a group of Brown University students a few days earlier. (Last week, we noted that those shootings had caused The Providence Journal’s traffic to spike similarly in December.) Other sites with big December increases: Florida’s Jacksonville Today (up 226%), Signal Ohio (up 169%), and Massachusetts’ Plymouth Independent (up 159%).

Here are the overall rankings for Q4, followed by the top 25 for each of October, November, and December. (As I’ve explained previously, the sites eligible for these rankings are nonprofit news outlets that are members of either the Institute for Nonprofit News, LION [Local, Independent, Online News] Publishers, or both. Public media outlets are also ineligible, since they have their own rankings.)