But they're not taking down murderers every time they get somebody. A lot of these people have no criminal history. For years, ICE's public affairs department was run like any other routine government communication shop. They posted public service announcements and news releases, mostly to their own website where very few Americans would ever see them. But since Trump's second term, ICE has rapidly transformed itself into an influencer-style media machine, churning out nonstop viral videos of tactical operations and immigration raids. ICE's social media strategy and ability to dominate the internet has come to serve as a blueprint for other Trump administration agencies, and their relentless focus on dominating the online world is already reshaping public opinion on immigration. Drew Harwell is a reporter at The Washington Post, and he recently published an investigation into ICE's social media blitz. Today, he's joining me to reveal the inside information that he uncovered about how ICE's internet meme team operates, what their internal chat logs reveal about their approach, the Gen Z clip farming operation they're employing, and how a previously under-the-radar federal law enforcement agency became an influencer-style media machine. Drew, welcome to Power User. Thanks for having me. To start off, can you tell me a little bit about how did ICE's public affairs office operate before this Trump term? And what has changed? Yeah, so ICE's public affairs office, it used to just be this boring kind of government, you know, every government agency has their own public affairs shop. And they basically are never seen because they interact with reporters, they put out press releases, they kind of do the back end stuff that nobody pays attention to. But since Trump 2.0 started, ICE's office and a couple of the others have really taken the lead and being like the core megaphone of the Trump administration, putting out memes, putting out this like really bombastic, like skull cracking videos about how tough they are. And just being at the forward side of the Trump push online to be like really tough on immigration and to be talking about mass deportation basically 24 seven. Yeah, it seems like, I mean, of all the deranged posts from the Trump administration, there are a lot of really unhinged videos from the main White House account. But I feel like aside from the main White House account, the most viral Trump administration account has become the ICE account. They've tweeted like all of these crazy viral videos. Talk me through kind of like how this operation is up and running and like how have they sort of like changed their approach to social media to sort of so consistently go viral. It actually really did start with the White House. The White House, they have this press office that, of course, under Trump was really encouraged to not pull any punches. And they told me that their approach was to be smash mouth and not the band, like to really just be running into people all day long, be triggering the libs, be feeding the base with this content that was constantly lionizing Trump, constantly tearing down Democrats and other perceived enemies as horrible people. and constantly like memeing immigration and making goofy, edgy videos about shipping, you know, brown people into planes and out of the country. And so the White House started it. And actually, a lot of these sort of agencies underneath the White House, people like the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Labor, Department of Education, a lot of those agencies have political appointees, just like with every administration. So they bring in people who were loyal to the Trump people during the campaign and are now kind of installed at these agencies. So you could actually see as the year went on, these agencies starting to take on that White House strategy of memeing their way into attention and virality. And the Department of Homeland Security and ICE were like on the first part of that. And we actually, you know, from our reporting, we found that that was by design. Like we could see from these internal chat messages that we got from inside this, you know, DHS ICE team, where the White House was really pushing them to put out more content, put out more videos of not just memes about immigration, but actual immigration operations themselves, like dispatch video makers and producers to shadow these ICE agents going out on these raids and operations, bring that video back, pull out the most clippable pieces of it, and put it online, and then put some caption about how it was like this epic takedown action movie thing, put on a rap soundtrack. So they were really like forward facing at the start of it. And they were really, you know, disturbing a lot of people, but also getting a lot of attention just through the metrics of social media and just constantly putting out content. You write in your piece that ICE's visual communications team embedded in the public affairs division began recording on the field more frequently, accompanying officers on raids and removal operations, shooting video day and night. You also wrote that any video producer who witnessed a particularly cinematic scene was expected to alert their supervisors so the agency and the White House could promote it on their social media channels. Employees on ICE's digital engagement team then raced to edit and post the footage on social media in hopes of securing a viral win. Can you kind of talk about this, just like the mechanics of this? Like, do they have these video content people just following around on raids now? And what does that look like? And also just like, what does that mean for the privacy of these people that are being recorded seemingly without their consent? Like you're getting raided by ICE and then you have like a whole videography team there basically do like capturing it so that it can go viral. 100 percent. Yeah, they literally did have videographers, video producers, trained people with sometimes cameras, sometimes just their phones that would be in the backseat of these SUVs from ICE deportation removal officers going out to not just targeted operations where they would know they were going for people who were undocumented immigrants, but also the kinds of stops we've been seeing more throughout this administration. traffic stops, untargeted. They're basically profiling people who they think may be in the country without papers and going after them. And they're getting video all the time. I mean, it's basically functioning like a media operation. These videographers would have their phones. They would go to their chat and say, hey, I'm in Houston. We just saw this operation. One of the guys ran. We got this really action-packed video. The officer took him down. It's going to be a great clip for social media. And then the team would respond back in the office and say like, oh, great, great content, like, let's put this online immediately, because they wanted to go viral. I mean, they wanted to make this stuff that would please the White House, would piss off the libs. And so in terms of privacy, we saw 1000s of messages, the privacy of the people they were arresting was never something that was brought out. And I talked to people from past administrations, these are law enforcement activities, you know, these are police and officers detaining people, arresting people. Often in the past, their faces have been blurred, not just for the people's protection, but for the sanctity of the case to help the prosecutors prosecute the case in a way. They did not seem to care about that at all. They would want to be putting out people's faces and putting them on wanted posters And they were proud of that Did you get any insight into kind of what makes an arrest video particularly good or cinematic Like what sort of videos that they capturing were performing the best online and what sort of things are they looking for They were really trying to make cops TV show style like action scenes where there'd be a chase, there would be a guy getting taken down. A lot of these operations in the real world were not like action movies. It was, you know, people being pulled out of their car or people being pulled off the job site. And some of the videos we saw were women in aprons, men in paint spec jeans that were just coming. So they were not action movies, but they wanted to really focus on the spectacle, the ones that would go viral the most. And you could see actually in the chats where they would be celebrating the ones where there was really a takedown. And the White House put out a clip that said, like, this is an epic takedown of five guys outside a home improvement store. And they really wanted to play up just the outrage of it, the anger, because they knew that people who hated seeing this, who were liberal or whatever, they would share it because they were pissed off too. And so they were basically using the outrage of the moment and the spectacle to go viral more consistently. And what about arrests that like don't fit the narrative? Those were just completely ignored. And that was one thing that was a surprise to me. And that was really disturbing to some of the people inside the agency as well, was that they were only going after the worst of the worst. That was like the slogan of ICE this year. Because, you know, they get a lot of criticism for separating families, deporting young parents, people who don't have criminal backgrounds. And yet they wanted to make every case about the worst of the worst. They wanted to play up when they would get somebody who was a criminal, who had done horrible things in the past. And so all of the content they started putting out, they started using that moniker. And so the people inside the agency were getting really disturbed because they were like, well, we're basically suggesting that everybody we're capturing on video is this horrible monster, which wasn't the case. And it was really kind of warping the public understanding of this agency that does a mission under the Trump administration, but they are not taking down murderers every time they get somebody. A lot of these people have no criminal history. In addition to kind of like the cinematic, like you said, this like cop style, like cinema verite kind of like footage and stuff. I feel like they've also gotten really aggressive with the captions and the music strategy. Like we've seen a bunch of artists speak out. I think Ice used a Taylor Swift song, although she didn't speak out, but Sabrina Carpenter responded. What role does all of that stuff play in virality? Because it seems like that strategy has changed, too, where previously maybe a government agency would be worried about copyright. And now it seems like they're leaning so hard into like viral sounds and like extreme captions and just like doing anything to go viral. Yeah. Previous ICE agencies, even under Trump 1.0, never used copyright material, would never use pop music, would never use rap songs, would never do these kinds of captions. And under this administration, they have been basically enabled from the top to take content that they have no right to. And you can see the artist really agitating about that. Yeah, people like Sabrina Carpenter, Jay-Z, you know, they've been taking this copyrighted music down because they didn't give permission and because they don't want their song on some video of like immigrants being tackled to the ground and shipped out of the country. But the ICE officials we talked to and the White House themselves said, we're fine with this because I think they realize that that stuff's going to get shared, whether they have the right to it or not. And on a platform like X, they don't have the permission to it, but they'll still get the engagement because people share the stuff, even if it pisses them off. And then the captions, you know, the captions are just constantly berating liberals, belittling immigrants, just making a big joke of it all, not really treating it seriously as pests. And these cases are life and death cases in some instances. I feel like it's so depraved. Like that seems to be the vibe of a lot of the posts. Like you said, I think a lot of liberals and leftists end up quote tweeting it and amplifying these videos further because they're just so outrageous and like horrifyingly cruel. It's like 4chan talk. It's like this administration has 4chanified. And what I mean by that is just like edgy and crude for edginess sake. Like there's no acknowledgement that there's a human on the other side. It's really just trying to paint this as a black and white, you know, evil versus good thing. And the Trump administration, you know, they have done that in their advertising to try to recruit new ICE officers, too, where they're talking about the enemies at the gates. We have to repel foreign invaders, really using this kind of like language of belligerence and war and combat to dehumanize the other and elevate themselves as heroes. You talk about also just like the endless appetite for content that the White House has and how these people are just working overtime to basically just like feed more and more and more content. And even that ICE might bring on like more videographers to, you know, shadow every operation of the SWAT team and other things. And I'm just wondering, like, kind of what sort of people are feeding into this machine. I feel like there's so many people that maybe don't want to join ICE to like do the raids, but they're like based 19 year old content makers. And, you know, they would love to like basically just make viral based slop, I guess, to like own the libs online. Yeah. And the political appointees who are now working for DHS and ICE, they do have that background where they were meme makers for a lower level Republican candidate or they had come up through like a conservative college campus group. And they had gained a level of skill at using memes to spin their ideology online, get attention. There are a lot of people like that in this country. A lot of them work for the Trump administration. They see this as a way to win the information war. And so, yeah, it really is a lot of self-professed based Gen Z content creators on the right who were doing this basically pro bono, but now work for the government. And from their side, they're proud to be doing this, right? They're getting a level of attention they never could have gotten before. They're getting shared by all of the right wing influencers they looked at. There's almost a level of competition between these people of like, can I make the content that everybody watches and that pisses off everybody? And so when they get some viral video that is, you know, when they did like the Pokemon video that was like, got to catch them all and showed a door being exploded off its hinges and immigrants being detained, really disturbed a lot of people and got a ton of views. And that was seen as a win for them because they had used their skill in creating content to win attention. Well, it seems like this whole strategy and like you said, these people and like the world they're marinating in is just so intertwined with like the broader Trump administration obsession with like content and influencer style marketing. And it seems like, I don't know, so much of the Trump administration is just completely intertwined with like the digital media ecosystem and like dominating on platforms like X and TikTok, etc. And it feels like this is sort of like the crown jewel of a lot of those efforts. It is. And in their defense, that is where politics is going, right? Media and politics, these things are played out online. So I think it's a reflection of their understanding that this is where they reach people. And you know they tell that to us all the time like we don have to care about the traditional media anymore because our people are online They on social media This is how we reach them And they right right Because you know we saw this with Harris and Kamala HQ and even Obama many years before where memes were seen as clearly something that would carry forward an idea and help your ideology grow. And so I think what makes them different is they don't have any kind of guardrails to bring themselves in. They're just happy to be like these edgelords, pissing people off all the time about stuff that we always took for granted that the government would be taking these things seriously. and not memifying, deporting a million people from the country. And yet they don't have those druthers. Yeah, I mean, I've written, both of us, I've written together so much about like this shift towards this influencer-driven media. My book is behind me somewhere. But it seems like the Trump administration, I mean, while the Democrats, I guess, try to like astroturf whatever, you know, Hakeem Jeffries is doing, like it seems like this administration has worked in this like symbiotic way with a lot of influencers. Obviously we have all the influencers replacing the traditional press at the Pentagon, inviting them into White House briefings. Can you talk about also like what ICE is doing with influencers, like, you know, in terms of inviting them out on raids? And like, it seems like not only do they have their own content operations, but they're also working with influencers to amplify all of this. Absolutely. That was like a key part of their strategy. We could see in their chats where they actually said, how do we feed info to influencers first? So there was an understanding that they could go to a Benny Johnson or, you know, a lives a TikTok Chaya Reichich, who you know very well, and get not just millions of views on their content, but also people who would not push back at all, right, who would not question what they were saying, would just basically repeat it with no pushback. And so you could see this public affairs shop, which again, this is not how they have ever run, but they would take, you know, we got this really great arrest, we have this operation coming where we're going to storm this building, or Secretary Kristi Noem is going to go to a Home Depot. And so Benny Johnson, we want you to come and get your cell phone video. And they knew that these influencers would be there at a moment's notice, they would get a bunch of video, they would live stream it, and then they would clip it into a million different clips and then share it like that. So they were really forward looking and very proactive at getting influencers this kind of material. And whether that was actually a useful strategy, I think you could kind of ask the question is people who are watching Benny Johnson, they're already kind of pro-ICE to begin with. So whether they're really changing people's minds in terms of the 300 million people who live in the US, I think is a bigger question. But they were taking this really seriously. Like, how can we get the influencers on our side? Yeah. And like you said, they're letting them in the piece, like, wear these tactical vests. Like, it seems like they're making them seem like, oh, you're getting this privileged access. Like, it reminds me of even just the influencers being able to visit Seacott down in El Salvador, where I think to the influencers audiences who are stupid and don't have any media literacy, no hate. But like, I feel like they're like, oh, look, he got this exclusive behind the scenes access to like show what it's really like. But really, they're just functioning as like a mouthpiece. And it seems like just sort of traditional journalists generally are being increasingly excluded from this entire media pipeline. Yeah. And like you said, it's symbiotic, right? Like the influencer is given this quote unquote, like unique, original, exclusive content is going to be with the secretary in these moments and be the first influencer to get this stuff, right? They're going to win in the competition, even with other right-wing influencers, and get all the views from that. And so there's a clear benefit to them in saying yes to getting this. And then from the government side, they get this wonderful promotion online. They get these people who they know are going to be glowingly positive about everything they do. And so you start to see why they're choosing this. I mean, why would they choose to work with traditional journalists who will ask them tough questions, who they won't know what the story will say at the end of it, who will probably go out and do other reporting and find out the ramifications of what they've done? Why work with them when you can just go to this echo chamber and get your message out that way? It seems like the strategy is also being replicated, especially during like protest coverage. Like you talk about the protests against the ICE raids in L.A. that happened a while ago and how they've tried to like reframe that. I was so shocked when I was going back to look for content related to that protest stuff for a totally separate video I was doing that. So much of the footage that I found actually from those protests, like protest footage was actually, aside from Hassan Piker's stream, right-wing influencers, like, putting out this, like, sensationalized content that, like, as somebody that was on the ground reporting from that protest was, like, so different from what actually happened. And it seems like they're just, like, able to kind of even just rewrite the narratives around these protests as well by leveraging these same kind of, like, media tactics. Yeah, because they know most of the people who are going to be experiencing these protests are going to be experiencing them on social media through whoever's camera gets to them first. So even if a protest is 99% peaceful, right, you're going to have all of these cameras going to these flashpoints of where people are getting taken down and fighting with the cops and throwing whatever smoke grenades or whatever. A lot of the content was coming from these right-wing influencers. And even these ICE and DHS teams would have people who would shadow people like Greg Bovino, who has taken basically a leadership role in a lot of these, where through this reporting, we would see people taking video of the people taking video, right? Like this sort of second order of like this panopticon of all of these cameras facing each other and the protest being like right at the center and it was so fascinating because you would see kind of that raw video and then a couple days later you would see it on social media and it would be highly produced it would be the soundtrack to this like bump in whatever the the trending sound of the day was and you could just understand like okay whoever took this video had clearly an agenda going in that they wanted to frame the protesters as horrible or whatever and you just see that playing out basically now with every gathering. And so it's really hurtful for our understanding of like what people actually believe when everything we're getting is translated through this ideological lens. Yeah, it's just like such an aggressive and effective propaganda strategy. You talk about like some of these specific posts, even ISIS X account posted a video of a bound protester in Portland being wheeled into custody face down on a flatbed cart with the lyrics, they see me roll in or this clip of Illinois protesters that said, get a job, you imbecilic morons. And this other montage of arrestees mugshots. And like, it's so dystopian and it seems so effective. And like, as both of us have reported on too, it seems like the right is just so successfully dominating the internet in every which way. And then I kind of like, look at what the Democrats are doing to reply. And it seems like they're not doing anything to like challenge any of this. I mean, we can get into kind of like the stuff that they're doing. That's actually going to be more harmful. Like there's stupid regulations that they're doing, but like, I don't even see them responding. Like, is there any sort of like Democrat or like liberal, like pushback that's effective? I feel like most of the time they're just amplifying these posts. Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I think that's the hardest part is because you see a lot of people going online after you see these videos and just saying, this is horrible. How dare they? This is disturbing. Which I feel like they like. That like the point They love that Right And you know when I talk to the White House meme people the DHS meme people that like a feather in their cap when they piss off Democrats and get them to share it And you know so part of this is like the amplification thing with how do you get around that? But also they feel like, okay, we're pissing off all the right people and we're deputizing them to become our messengers. So I think it's really hard, except, you know, you see some Democrats and advocates trying to focus in on the humanity of it all, right? And saying like, this is not how we should treat people. This is not how an administration should talk online. But it's hard on social media when you devote like one second per tweet or one second per video to really have that broader, you know, that like deeper ethical conversation for every piece of content. So often it's just whatever is the most explosive, the most psychologically engaging wins in the moment. So I think it's something where the administration has the upper hand in that way. I mean, so much of being successful online and being a successful influencer online, which I think is like what they all kind of ultimately these accounts are operating as influencer accounts is like positioning yourself against something and constantly manufacturing drama and like just having some sort of big antagonistic villain that you can constantly kind of like trigger or fight against whatever. Ethan Klein, I think, has mastered this and some others. But I guess I think of that like they have made the Democrats into this thing where like if the Democrats respond, they're triggered libs. The Democrats seem to have no sort of proactive media strategy at all to combat it. the Democrats certainly aren't working with any sort of politically relevant influencers as far as I've seen lately to kind of counter any of this. And then in the meantime, they're focused on actually sort of regulating tech in a way that would permanently entrench the right's power online with their stupid online safety bullshit that I talk about all the time in my videos. Is there anything that you think, just as somebody that reports on this world, that you have seen work against this strategy? I mean, is there anything to be done? Or also, are these platforms just fundamentally weighted for this messaging to go viral? Because I also So much of this originates on X, where Elon Musk is sympathetic to what ICE and the current administration is up to. A lot of this does play out on X. And in some ways, that's a blessing and a curse for the administration because they are so X-focused that I think they lose out on the other platforms where a lot of normal Americans spend their time. So the hard part of this is it's a daily war. Every operation that they take video of is just one chapter of this broader battle. Well, and like you said, I mean, they are influencers and they see this as thematic content that they can go to over and over and over. It's like every raid is another way for them to show that ICE is the best and these immigrants are horrible people. And so every new video is a way to add another coin into that slot and build up that story some more. And so I think what it takes is just, you know, the people who are going to be successful are just going to be constantly battling that with their own content, with pushing back in their own way. And seeing this as what it is, is this is the new media now. This is how politics gets formed. Thinking about the different platforms, I will say for as much as this content gets out there and gets views on X, and there is a lot of support often on X for some of these videos, you go to some of the other platforms where it's posted, it's a completely different story. And you go on to like the TikTok accounts for even the administration. And a lot of their posts are just flooded with criticism and really harsh pushback and memes against the Trump administration, memes criticizing their immigration policies. And when people see this content, they're going to be looking at the comments too. So there's an ideological battle even playing out on the post level. And that's just one platform, right? You look at, you know, Instagram and some of the others. I feel like Instagram's in the middle. And then you have TikTok, which is the most progressive, at least from what I've noticed in the comment sections. Although I wonder how much that's going to change now that TikTok is going to be effectively under Trump control, you know, like already, even from right after the inauguration, like you had TikTok catering more and more to the Trump admin. And I feel like this might not last very long. Yes. Yes. So every platform is different and you're going to get different audiences. But, you know, I just go back to my question of like, is this really changing people's minds? And we can see from the polling that Trump's immigration policies are not popular. In fact, they're getting less popular all the time. Whether the social media was a component of that, I think you can't really disentangle it that easily. But it's not really changing people's minds in any kind of noticeable way in terms of people are now supporting mass deportation in a way that they weren't before. Yeah, I feel like the average people are not supporting mass deportation, but they've so effectively dominated the narrative that you wouldn't think that. And I do wonder what this has normalized. I mean, I do think that we know from sort of research as well that like racism has gotten more exacerbated, that there is like a lot more negative sentiment towards certain immigrant, like, you know, types of immigrants and stuff. And I just I wonder kind of like how this media is just warping the culture, especially for young people that are like 13 years old that are consuming all of this stuff and thinking that this is just completely now the way I mean, it is that they're not thinking it. It's true that this is just how politics and media operates like so many of these zoomers that you've interviewed and that I've spoken to as well that work in this world now, like they're 19, 20 years old, 22 years old. Like they grew up during Trump 1.0. And I feel like their view of what's considered normal discourse or like what's a propaganda machine and what's not like it's just been totally warped. And they have absolutely no respect or no reverence for like journalistic integrity or anything like that. And that's what this administration wants. Like they want to shift the Overton window. They want this kind of crude way of talking about this stuff, which was not used on a governmental way in 10 years ago. They want that to be the norm now forever. And if they reach the kinds of people that it seems like they're reaching, you know, social media people, young people, they might get their way. And I think that's what's really sort of like disconcerting about this in the broad term is like they're creating this machine to change public opinion forever. And they're doing it through the social media tools that we all use and that we all depend on. And that have been proven to be very effective. So, yeah, how you counter that is going to be the biggest challenge. And the Democrats are just going to put stupid laws in place that make it worse. All right, Drew. Well, thank you so much for your reporting. Your story is fantastic. I hope everyone goes to the Washington Post and reads it. And thanks for joining me this week. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. All right. That's it for this week's episode. 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