In March 2026, Mike Bost gave a phone interview to the Effingham Daily News about immigration enforcement. Partway through, he made a claim about the people protesting ICE:

"We know that the protestors are paid. There's not a question … We know that from our United States intelligence, who's been supporting the groups. They've been involved with them for years because they like to cause chaos."

He added:

"Most of them, when you ask the protestors: 'What are you protesting?' They can scream 'ICE,' but they don't really know what ICE does."

The reporter, Marie Adamick, wrote down what he offered as the basis for it. Per the Effingham Daily News: "Certain protestors use more-expensive signs, leading Bost to believe they have some sort of financial backing."

Nicer signs, and unnamed intelligence he didn't identify. That is the whole case.

"There's not a question" is doing a lot of work

Notice the construction. Not "I suspect," not "I've heard reports." There's not a question. A member of Congress telling his constituents that a fact is settled, when the evidence he supplies for it is the production quality of poster board.

He named Minneapolis and Chicago as where this is happening. He did not name the intelligence agency, the report, the briefing, or the groups. He did not say who is paying, how much, or how anyone knows.

There is a reason this matters beyond one loose quote. Once you decide the people objecting to something are being paid, you no longer have to answer any of them.

Which is exactly what he does with his own constituents

Bost has represented Illinois's 12th District since 2015. He does not hold in-person town halls. He holds telephone town halls, where a staffer screens the calls.

He explained why at the top of one of them on March 11, 2025, as WPSD Local 6 reported:

"We're now in a time when live town halls are being overrun by organized protests and partisan activist groups. When they are starting to crash these across the country, it doesn't help anyone."

Same idea, a year earlier: the people who show up aren't really constituents, they're an operation.

So look at who actually showed up. That night, more than 50 people stood outside his Murphysboro office. They have names, and the paper printed them.

Judy Ashby runs the Carbondale Positive Action Committee. It was the fifth protest her group had organized since Presidents Day. Her stated goal was building a local network: "The more we do that, the more we'll be on a solid foundation to really make a difference."

Bonnie Cotter didn't even make her own sign — she borrowed one about DOGE. Her question for her congressman:

"Bost is not a person who serves his constituents. What are five things you did today for your constituents? Not your donors, not your party."

Karen Frailey is a Pope County resident who lived in Jackson County for more than 30 years. She had signed up for Bost's February telephone town hall and never got a call. Her point:

"He represents everybody here and everybody in the district, not just the people that think like him. For years I wouldn't call because I thought it didn't make a difference, but even if he and his staff don't think the same way I do, they need to get calls from people so that they understand that people are unhappy."

That is a retired woman from deep southern Illinois asking to be phoned back. It is not a paid operation.

The February town hall that never called anybody

The reason Frailey was there is its own small story. Bost scheduled a telephone town hall for February 24, 2025. So many people who signed up never received the call that he had to apologize on Facebook and reschedule.

When he ran the make-up call on March 11 — with a new phone vendor — he told listeners that a big in-person town hall draws a few hundred people while his call reached 100,000 households. That number is the pitch. It skips the part where reaching a household means a phone ringing, and being heard means a staffer picking your question.

The protests didn't stop. Constituents have circulated a petition demanding an in-person town hall. Ashby's summary to the Daily Egyptian was this: "Normally he doesn't show up in person. He just talks on the phone, and the calls are monitored. He doesn't just listen to everybody, and so he doesn't show up."

The same paper found Abby Butler at that protest. She had driven an hour and a half from Massac County to stand on a sidewalk in Murphysboro at dusk, because of a budget resolution she thought would cut Medicaid: "That's our grandmothers. That's us."

This isn't new for him either. Back on May 8, 2017, four days after he voted for the bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, around 60 people demonstrated outside his Carbondale office over what it would do to people with pre-existing conditions. Nine years of southern Illinoisans standing on sidewalks outside his offices, and his read on the phenomenon is that somebody's paying them.

What he says he does instead

To be fair to Bost, he told the Effingham Daily News his office does engage with protesters:

"At times when it's hot outside, we bring them water and ice cream, so they don't get too hot. They brought their petitions in at one time, and they reach out, and we'll take their calls, and we'll do everything that we can legally do."

Water and ice cream is decent. It is not a town hall. Bringing a popsicle to someone standing outside your door because you won't take their question inside is not constituent service — it's hospitality offered in place of accountability.

And on the same March 2025 call where he said live town halls get overrun, he put the choice to people this way:

"Protest in the streets if you want because that's your right, and if you want to do that, that's wonderful. But do you really want to cure the problem, or do you just want to say you hate Trump and you hate Republicans?"

Judy Ashby, Bonnie Cotter and Karen Frailey would each have been happy to answer that question. In person. If he'd ever scheduled one.

Source

Marie Adamick, "US Rep. Mike Bost defends ICE, supports Iran war", Effingham Daily News, March 6, 2026, and Brandyn Wilcoxen, "Bost hosts rescheduled telephone town hall; dozens protest in Murphysboro", WPSD Local 6 / The Southern Illinoisan, March 11, 2025. Photo by Brandyn Wilcoxen / The Southern.