🌅 ICE Is Spending $100 Million to Recruit Agents Online

SOURCE

The Washington Post

WHAT TO KNOW

• Internal documents obtained by The Washington Post show U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials plan to spend $100 million in a single year to run online recruitment ads targeting fans of far-right podcasts, streaming channels, and content creators. The agency also plans to use geofencing to push mobile ads to people at events like gun shows, UFC fights, and NASCAR races as part of what it calls a “wartime recruitment” strategy to support Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.

WHY IT MATTERS

• The documents reveal the agency’s plan to “flood the market” by spending millions of dollars on online ad campaigns seeking people willing to perform their “sacred duty” to “defend the homeland” and repel “foreign invaders.” Former ICE officials say the strategy is unlike anything the agency has ever attempted and could attract recruits eager for all-out combat against migrants. It also represents a serious deviation from the agency’s typical approach of recruiting veteran police officers and sheriffs with experience in a given locale and the talent to excel at the federal level.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• ICE is an executive branch agency completely under the purview of the president, though Congress defines the body of law it must enforce and courts determine the legality of its policies and conduct. It’s also an agency that’s newly flush with cash thanks to Congress passing Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act this summer, which tripled ICE’s annual enforcement and deportation budget to $30 billion and pumps $75 billion into the agency over the next four years.