The ICE Propaganda Campaign Goes Into Overdrive

TWO WEEKS AGO, THE X ACCOUNT for the Department of Homeland Security was being, all things considered, relatively normal.

There was a repost of a video about law enforcement at the Charlie Kirk memorial, a video on how the Secret Service had dismantled a digital network that could have carried out attacks near the United Nations General Assembly, a video of part of Trump’s tone-deaf, chest-beating speech at the U.N., and posts and news updates on the Dallas ICE field office shooting that left two immigrant detainees dead. The account did not shy away from making overtly partisan arguments—they claimed rhetoric from Democrats demonizing ICE agents had contributed to the shooting—but even in this, it was operating within expected parameters.

Then things took a turn.

Over the past week and a half, @DHSgov has amped up the rate, intensity, and belligerence of its content, posting or reposting nearly two dozen highly produced videos in that time. There were videos about the administration’s plans to forcefully impose order on Chicago, then Portland, by putting down violent protests by anarchists. There was also an attention-grabbing propaganda campaign, produced in coordination with MAGA commentators, meant to ensure the administration’s narrative about immigration reached even larger audiences.

The full canon of footage has made evident one of the defining features of the president’s deportation campaign: He wants it publicized far and wide, literally shouted from rooftops, and in ominous tones. It’s not enough to round up and detain those here illegally, video of it must be shot, edited, dramatized, and disseminated. ICE isn’t just doing immigration enforcement, it is now firmly in the content creation business.

Much of this seems geared toward maintaining the narrative that Trump used to justify his planned deportation ramp-up during his campaign last year: that the goal has always been simply to remove the most violent criminal interlopers from the United States.

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But it also provides insight into the way this administration views modern political warfare. The Trump team wants to swarm the information ecosystem with media of its own, knowing full well that they are competing with other videos, often shot by average citizens, that depict the nasty underbelly of ICE’s operations. Some Democratic lawmakers have even gone so far as to argue that the administration is proactively creating footage as a means to justify more aggressive operations.

DHS’s aggressive media-generation efforts come at a time when there are increasing questions about its mission. It’s not just an electorate that’s wondering why prices are still sky high. It’s also voters who are curious as to why the administration apparently has less and less to show for ICE’s staggering recent injection of $45 billion, which made it the best-funded law enforcement agency in the nation.

The administration has responded by depicting ICE as a noble, patriotic, singleminded agency whose agents are cast in heroic, Sicario-like scenarios of daring and risk. The videos they produce show those agents rappelling onto building rooftops from helicopters, deploying flash-bang grenades, and so forth, each bit of footage implying that overwhelming force is necessary.

But simply producing cinematic footage is not enough. DHS has also turned to MAGA’s strongest soldiers in the culture wars to help them spread it. And those right-wing influencers, in turn, have focused their efforts on one platform: Elon Musk’s X.

Perhaps the clearest distillation of this strategy came during recent protests outside an ICE facility in Portland. While a tense scene played out on the ground, several incendiary right-wing influencers and media figures—Nick Sortor, Katie Daviscourt, Honey Badger Mom, and Julio Rosas—were stationed on the building’s rooftops. They were there not just to watch but to record as well—a bird’s-eye view of the scuffles breaking out below.

Clad in a black protective vest inscribed with the word PRESS, Rosas was filmed sipping what appeared to be an orange Jarritos while bantering with acquaintances. Hydration choices aside, these commentators had a clear purpose: advancing the story that ICE—and Trump—wants. When Daviscourt went on Fox News sporting a black eye that she said she received from Antifa protesters who hit her with a flagpole, she was doing just this, subtlety be damned. And when the right-wing website she works for tweeted out a slick compilation of Daviscourt’s footage depicting Portland as a war zone in which what Trump calls “paid terrorists” were antagonizing brave law enforcement officers, the tweet noted that the video had been produced and posted by the White House. The fact that they were part of a propaganda operation could not have been stated more explicitly.

This was not the only time that flagpoles have played a role in the pro-ICE media campaign emanating from Portland. Sortor snatched an American flag away from protesters trying to burn it; Fox News reposted the moment on TikTok, where it received 218,000 likes and nearly 10,000 comments. Sortor soon regaled MAGA-friendly interviewers with the story of the flag later being stolen from him, and his brave decision to get it back. He said Trump, who signed an execut