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Inside ICE’s Push to Go Viral · Question Everything

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you've seen any posts on ICE's
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: social media accounts in the last year, or the Department
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: of Homeland Security's account, which ICE is part of. The
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: posts are aimed at making ICE's violence and aggression look cool,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: I guess, and to make fun of the people the
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: agency's targeting. They've been posting memes that make crude jokes
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: about immigrants, a meme with a white nationalist song, lots
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: of mugshots. Lots of reposts of clips from right-wing outlets,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: as well as short videos produced by ICE itself, showing
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: masked ICE agents tackling, chasing, questioning, handcuffing, and perp-walking people
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: in streets and parking lots across the country. They'll set
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: these videos to pop or rap music, slap them with
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: a hilarious caption, like, Minnesota's weather is cloudy with a 100%
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: chance of ICE.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Ha.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the agency will claim the people in the videos
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: have serious criminal records, Other times they don't, and it's
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: not clear what, if anything, the people whose faces are
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: being blasted across the Internet by the government have done wrong.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: We know ICE has been picking up lots of people
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: who don't have criminal histories and also American citizens. These
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: are mostly people of color in the videos and mugshots
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: and memes. The Supreme Court said last year that for now,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: while they deliberate a larger ruling, ICE agents can use
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: someone's race, the language they speak, or the fact that
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: they work at a low-income job as reasons to stop them.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Congress and the Trump administration have tripled ICE's budget to
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: nearly $ 30 billion, and a huge bucket of funds are
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: being poured into the agency's content creation and media strategy.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: The government is using taxpayer money to churn out videos
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: and memes that valorize ICE agents acting like bullies, make
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: immigration enforcement look like a violent game, and dehumanize immigrants
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: and people of color. and, lately, Americans who are protesting
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: in support of them. The Department of Homeland Security, DHS,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: has pumped out more than 400 videos on their account alone.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: And that was all before the ICE agent in Minneapolis
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: killed Renee Good this month, a 37-year-old mom who was
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: protesting ICE in her SUV. I've certainly been disgusted by
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the content that ICE has been putting out in recent months.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: But from the outside... I guess I assumed there was
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: some 20-something who'd been given the X login or whatever
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: and was churning out these memes and videos. But then
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: a reporter was leaked a bunch of sensitive info from
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: inside ICE that showed just how systematic this effort has been.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Officials see themselves as fighting an information war over immigration enforcement,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: as one of them put it. Orders about ICE's social
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: media strategy are coming from the White House. Today, As
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: thousands continue to protest ICE's killing of Rene Good in Minneapolis,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: we find out how is this content from ICE getting made?
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: What are the specific discussions about it, down to music
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: choice and captioning, that are happening inside the government?
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: They don't want videos that are just kind of like blah.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: They want somebody to be knocked to the curb and
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: thrown in an SUV.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: From Placement Theory and KCRW, this is Question Everything. I'm
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Brian Reed. Stick around. A few weeks ago, Drew Harwell,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: a tech reporter for The Washington Post, published a big
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: scoop from inside ICE. He'd been talking to anonymous sources
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: in and around the agency's public affairs office. Again, this
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: is part of DHS, Department of Homeland Security. And these sources,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: they were telling Drew and his colleagues that they were
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: very concerned about things they'd seen happening inside that department,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: ICE Public Affairs, since Trump took office again last year.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: These are not like crazy ideologues.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: They had been inside DHS because they believed in the
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: mission and yet had been so disturbed by how much
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: had changed over the last year that they just felt
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: like they had to talk.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Drew's sources were saying that the way ICE's public affairs
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: division operates has been overhauled and is focusing on aggressive, violent, crude,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: memefied content. Some of Drew's sources refer to it as propaganda,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: straight up. Drew had been wondering what exactly had been
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: going on inside the department. He'd been watching posts from
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: official government accounts all year, troubled. Is there one post
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: from this time where you were just like, whoa, okay,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: that seems like a new line?
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: There was one where this was a time when people
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: were starting to post these Studio Ghibli memes, which is
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: like the very cozy Japanese anime memes. And they were
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: using AI tools to make Ghibli-ified memes of anything. And
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: the White House made a Ghibli meme of a crying
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: immigrant woman who was actually a real woman who had
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: been arrested and was going to be deported. But, you know,
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: she's this large woman and she's very clearly like bawling.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: And they made like this goofy meme of it, basically
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: poking fun at her crying. It turned it into like
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: a big joke. And the White House posted this and
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: it had tens of millions of views. And it just
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: struck me as like kind of beyond the pale. But also,
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: you know, you saw a DHS post. It was like
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: a Pokemon gotta catch them all meme. And it starts
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: with like, you know, a real operation where they're blowing
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: down a door and they're playing the Pokemon gotta catch
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: them all music. And it's all about, you know, we're
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: gotta catch all the immigrants and deport them.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: The woman the White House depicted in the Studio Ghibli meme.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: ICE arrested her in Philadelphia. She had previously pled guilty
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: to attempted possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, been deported
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: to the Dominican Republic, and had apparently re-entered the U.S.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: The men being rounded up in the Pokemon video, it's
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: unclear what, if anything, they've done wrong. The caption just says,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: gotta catch them all. At the end of the video,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: they flash through a bunch of mugshots with crimes listed,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: but they're on Pokemon cards. Are we supposed to trust
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: that as an official rap sheet? It's demeaning and racist
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: to depict human beings as creatures to be hunted. And
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: it can warp the public's perception, making a mockery out
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: of the work of law enforcement.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: In this country, obviously, we have ideological differences. We talk
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: about immigration, but it is a real issue. And so
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: that it was becoming basically like this music video thing.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: These are real people. They're getting rounded up and detained.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: We don't know who these guys are. Drew says that's
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: the case with the people in a lot of these videos.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: They may be in the country legally. They may have
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: no criminal history. And yet they've been put into this
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: video that has a million views that, you know, the
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: caption is basically a joke. It's been shared by a
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: government agency, government officials who are paid by all of
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: us as taxpayers.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: These kinds of videos are what prompted Drew's sources in
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: the ICE Public Affairs Division to feed him inside info.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: And they ended up giving Drew something pretty explosive. A
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: trove of thousands of chats and messages from their internal system,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: this is like ICE's Slack or Microsoft Teams basically, showing
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: conversations between employees across the country over the course of 2025. Names, timestamps,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: detailed real-time discussions about ICE's video production and content strategy.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Like this one video taken in Baltimore that the White
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: House called an EPIC TAKEDOWN on X, with EPIC in
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: all caps. So it starts in like an SUV. You
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: just see like an officer just like sprint out of
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: the car and go tackle some guys basically on the
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: side of a road. I guess this is near a
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Home Depot. Yeah.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: And in the caption, they say, you know, watch the
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: action packed arrest video. They don't want videos that are
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: just kind of like blah. They want somebody to be
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: knocked to the curb and thrown in an SUV and
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: for the agents to look really tough because they know
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: those play really well. And That video did actually went
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: viral for ICE and it did so well that the
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: White House was really excited by it. We could see
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: from inside the chats where like this ICE team was
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: so excited that the video had done so well, like, okay,
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: we're doing it. We're really gaining attention for these kinds
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: of sting operations.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Who's filming this video?
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: So typically in these scenarios, it's an ICE videographer or
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: an ICE video producer who has gone out with this team,
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: is in the backseat with them. increasingly because they've been
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: trying to do more of these videos, they'll ask like,
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: you know, more traditional like spokespeople who, you know, handle
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: calls from reporters. They're asking them to go out on
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: the scene, hold up their phone and get this video.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: There's another video Drew was able to see behind the
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: scenes conversations about. It shows just how callous ICE and
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: DHS officials are being about the people the agency is targeting.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: This one was filmed in Houston.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: So the caption of this video is ICE on the
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: road's We made over 120 arrests in Houston on October 29th,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: clearing our roads of dangerous, often unlicensed and uninsured illegal
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: aliens who should not be behind the wheel.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: You see ICE agents perp-walking men with their hands behind
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: their backs, putting handcuffs on them, leading them into big
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: black SUVs. The video production is not the only aspect
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: of this that's new.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: ICE has traditionally always done these targeted operations where they
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: know there are undocumented immigrants. They have started doing these
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: more untargeted operations like this one where they're basically doing
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: traffic stops. They're stopping people who look undocumented often by
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: the color of their skin or some other indicator. And
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: stopping them on the side of the road, checking them
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: and then detaining them. So in this case, you know,
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: this person was a video producer, had shadowed this operation.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: They had gotten 120 people who were detained. And so
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: we can see from the chats where the videographer is
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: sort of sharing the material and the people back in
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: the main office of the ICE public affairs are like
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: getting kind of excited because they're hearing about like, oh,
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: we had all these arrests. They're all through the city.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: You know, we see people in handcuffs being put in
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: the back of the car. And we can see from
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: the chat being what people like, yeah, great shooting.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: That's video shooting, to be clear. It's bizarre to see
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: law enforcement praising the work of officers. It's just more content.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Like, we got great arrests. Like, this is the material
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: we want. Those are literal quotes, like from your story.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: You have a nice official, October 29th, 2.10 p.m., in
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: a chat says, arrests are wonderful, exclamation point. And someone
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: else says, a few minutes later, says, great shooting, exclamation point.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Great shooting. Yeah. So they're excited because this is content
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: to them. You could see them in real time strategizing
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: over the way to get the most views. When can
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: we post this during the day when it have the
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: maximum splash and maximum attention? I think I was surprised, though,
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: to see that there were messages from people inside the
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: unit who were not just really energized to get this
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: video of immigrants being taken down in Home Depot parking
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: lots and excited to get that video, but basically talking
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: about it in a gleeful way and just making jokes
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: about it too, like, let's kick more immigrants out of
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: the country. But I think just seeing that in detail
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: was pretty eye-opening. One thing that I found really interesting
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: from the conversation on this was, because it was an
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: untargeted operation, a lot of these people who are being detained,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: they don't know if they had criminal history. So you know,
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: ICE is always saying that they're picking up the worst
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: of the worst. And to be clear, like the.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Worst of the worst is an actual slogan that ICE uses.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, ICE has been sloganeering in the last year to
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: neutralize the criticism that they're just rounding up, you know,
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: working people and moms and whatever. They have tried to
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: say that actually we go for the worst of the worst.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: But a lot of these people are, you know, again,
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: they don't have any background. So you can see ICE
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: kind of strategizing in the chats over People are saying, well,
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: we can't like call these people the worst of the
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: worst because they've done basically no crimes. So they're always
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: looking for content that they can put out there to
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: reinforce that slogan.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, reading your story about this, it actually surprised me
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: to see that they kind of cared about accuracy, at
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: least in this instance. Like they didn't want to say
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: worst of the worst or they seem somewhat reluctant, I guess,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: to say worst of the worst if they didn't factually
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: know that you know, the people in this video that
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: they were captioning had the worst criminal histories. One takeaway
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: I had just from like watching a lot of these videos,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: in all of them, either the ICE agents are wearing
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: masks or they blur their faces. And so you have
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: this feeling of like a ton of visibility into what
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: ICE is doing, but yet none of them are individual people.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: It really is like this agency coming down On immigrants
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: or people perceived to be immigrants. And I just was
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: aware that like, oh, this is a subtle thing that
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: like they don't want us to know that these are individuals,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: you know, who are doing this to other individuals. They
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: don't want us to think about it that way.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that jumped out to me as well because that
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: was a layer of the editing process for these videos
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: that happened in every video where they would say like, okay,
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: a producer or an editor would say, okay, I'm going
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: into the video and I need to redact and blur
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: the face of every agent. They would very actively not blur.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: In some videos, they do blur, but they very actively
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: not blur the people who were being detained. They were
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: very clearly like, let's let these people be on video
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: and let's let everybody see them getting arrested and thrown
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: into the back of an SUV. And, you know, these
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: were people, again, they had no due process at any point, right?
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Like they had just been arrested a couple of minutes ago.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: They had not gone through court. They maybe weren't even charged.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: And yet they were the subject of this million view
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: video and who knows how many of their friends and
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: family saw it or how that could affect their life.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: So for ICE to acknowledge the risk of having people
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: be identified and to go to that extent of buffing
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: out all of the agents' faces because they understand the
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: danger of it, but to then be so actively anti-redaction
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: for the faces of the people they were detaining, it
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: just conveyed the cavalier attitude that they would have to
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: this process where they were just like, okay, you know,
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: these people, they're just going to be part of the
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: content mill for us.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: After a quick break, the social media decrees coming down
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: from the White House. In the messages he was leaked,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Drew could see one high-level member of this ICE unit,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: the assistant director for public affairs, a woman named Emily Covington,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: serving as a liaison between the team and the White House.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: bringing directives from above. Drew saw her asking in the
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: chats for, quote, good arrest videos and posts that would
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: go viral. She's demanding lots of volume, lots of content.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: At one point she writes, what PR tactics can we
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: deploy that we don't typically? Should we feed info to
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: an influencer? And they do. ICE has let right-wing influencers
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: suit up in bulletproof vests and join ride-alongs with ICE agents.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: DHS has provided access to Secretary Kristi Noem. The videos
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: get shared with millions of followers on these accounts. Public
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Affairs has also hired influencers, including a MAGA women's lifestyle
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: influencer and an actor who played a mountain man in
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: a cable TV show. In one chat, the mountain man
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: suggested this tagline for ICE. We are everywhere. We will
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: find you. Music choice also plays a big part in
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: these discussions. At one point, as officials are talking about
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: whether to score a video with country music, assistant director
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Emily Covington says, I feel like we need something a
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: little more hardcore.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: They want something that is explosive. Like if there's an
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: ICE agent in armor looking tough, you know, in moonlight
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: with a gun barging into a door, it'll make the
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: ICE agents look badass. They are really leaning into the brutality.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Of it all. I mean, there's been some particularly dark stuff,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: like ICE put out a meme with the quote, we'll
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: have our home again, which is a white supremacist song
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: that groups like the Proud Boys sing. Did you see
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: them discussing decisions to put out content like that?
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: I didn't see specific messages about these. But you know,
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: we did see like little inside jokes in our chats.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: There's one quote we have in the story where it's
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: like they share a census story about how 2 million
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: immigrants have left the country. And they're like, okay, well,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: great 40 million to go like They're really kind of
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: excited about that in a way that I think would
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: be pretty shocking to people. It's the same kind of
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: attitude that leads to these memes.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: That stat about two million immigrants leaving the country, by
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: the way, it's not reliable. The actual number is probably
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: much lower, according to the Center for Migration Studies. A
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: big goal of this production machine is to drive the narrative,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: to overwhelm us. And by us, I mean regular people
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: and journalists with a deluge of content. During the protests
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: over ICE raids this summer in L.A., according to people
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: in the messages, the White House was ordering the public
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: affairs office to start, quote, flooding the airwaves with content
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: from every ICE arrest. Officials wanted a post every 30 minutes.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: And the content strategy, it's also a big part of
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: ICE's massive hiring push.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: We did another story that was based on some other
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: internal documents that talk about recruiting agents. They want to
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: hire 14,000 people. They basically want to like double the
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: amount of deportation officers that they have. ICE has this
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: $ 100 million strategy. And so part of that is putting
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: out these social media ads where, you know, they're using
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: action movies and video games and like first person shooter
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: posters and talking about this as like these foreign invaders
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: are coming in. You have to be the guard at
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: the gates. And we saw this document that goes into
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: their recruiting strategy. And they said even more so beyond
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: influencers that are doing like geo-targeting where they'll geo-fence around
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: like a UFC fight, a NASCAR race, a gun show,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: and anybody who has a phone and walks to one
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: of those arenas will get an ad on their phone
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: that says like, hey, join ICE, be one of these
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: patriot warriors. That's part of how they feel like we're
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: going to staff up the operation is by attracting that
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: kind of mentality. And, you know, ICE has always gone
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: for law enforcement and military veterans. Like there is kind
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: of a pipeline for federal agents getting local cops. They've
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: rarely gone to this level where it's like immigrants are
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: invaders and you have to fight the flood. Like there's
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: a poster where they used like an image from the
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: video game Halo where you play a super soldier and
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: you're just killing aliens. And they're basically just saying like
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: the immigrants are– You know, invaders, you have to go
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: out and stomp. We've just never seen that kind of
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: advertising before, even from ICE.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: In one of these Washington Post stories, a colleague of
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Drew's went to a job fair in Texas. where ICE
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: was recruiting. An MMA fighter was there looking to sign up.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: He was amped. He said he couldn't wait to work
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: with these agents, quote, that are going to arrest you,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: slam your face on the pavement, and send you home.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: When I've talked to people who were inside DHS previously,
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: They said, it's no wonder that we're getting in these
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: people who that's how they see this job. Like they
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: don't see this as a law enforcement job that we've
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: always preached it as. They see it as like, let's
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: go out and go into full combat battlefield mode. And
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: so they really worry about combining that with this influencer
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: operation that is 100% about their own, you know, ideology
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: around immigration. They worry that you're basically inflaming the work
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: that you should be doing in a non-inflammatory way. Influencers
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: will sell a product, will sell their personality, will be themselves.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: This is in service to an ideology and policies that
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: are a lot more life or death. You're making this content,
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: you're pissing people off, and then you're asking agents to
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: go into communities where people are worried they're going to
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: be like the next video or the next person to
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: be deported. You know, I think back to like the
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: shooting in Minnesota of Rene Good by an ICE agent.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: He was holding a phone. He was recording video basically
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: the whole time. And when I look at these videos
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: and think about that, it's like a question in my
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: mind of why are now ICE agents getting video? Like,
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: why are they holding up their phone? What is the
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: protocol that encourages them or at least allows them to
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: have a phone in one hand and a gun in
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: the other?
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: One last takeaway from Drew's reporting that I actually found
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: very reassuring. This social media strategy by immigration enforcement, these mean, hurtful,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: racist posts, they may be backfiring. In July, about six
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: months into ISIS crackdown and the content blitz about it,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: a vast majority of Americans said in a Gallup poll
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: that immigration is good for the country. 79% of Americans
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: said that, a record high. About 62% said they disapproved
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: of how Trump was handling immigration. This was before ICE
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: killed Rene Good in the street. Since the shooting, a
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: new poll from YouGov and The Economist shows 46% of
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Americans support abolishing ICE altogether. That's never happened before. If
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: you have come across these ICE videos or memes and
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: felt alone in your revulsion, if you thought, well, a
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: majority voted for Donald Trump, So most people must want this. Don't.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: That's the propaganda doing its job. And one piece of
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: advice before we go. If you feel this way, don't
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: watch the videos. Don't juice the algorithm. Don't add to
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: the views. As Drew found, there are officials inside ICE
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: celebrating as those numbers climb. That's what's so insidious about
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: social media propaganda. Even watching it critically still counts. Every
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: view becomes an incentive to make more videos and to
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: push them further. We get implicated in the cruelty. So
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: don't watch the videos. If one of these clips shows
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: up in your feed, just keep scrolling.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Fast.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Drew Harwell and his colleagues at the Washington Post,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: including visual forensics reporter Joyce Soyun Lee for their excellent reporting.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: We'll link to their stories in the show notes. Check
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: them out. When the Post reporters contacted DHS about the
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: internal messages they got, a spokeswoman said they were proud
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: of their social media strategy. Asked separately about the white
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: nationalist meme, she said it was a reference to the, quote,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: 20 plus million illegal aliens invading the country. And, quote,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know where you guys are getting this stuff,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: but it is absurd. Please follow Question Everything on whatever
• 24:06
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• 24:09
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• 24:11
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• 24:14
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• 24:16
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• 24:18
  Speaker 1: can do to spread the word. Also, I just found
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: out that we're nominated for Best Podcast of the Year
• 24:25
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• 24:27
  Speaker 1: the Podcast Academy, which is just awesome. So, I don't know.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Tell your friends about that, too. Today's show was produced
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: by Zach St. Louis and edited by me and our
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: managing editor, Kevin Sullivan. Robin Semien and I are the
• 24:41
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• 24:45
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• 24:49
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• 24:52
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• 25:00
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• 25:15
  Speaker 1: will see you next time.