ICE Recruitment | Messages appeal to white supremacists

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are accused of seeking to include white supremacists among the agents deployed on the ground to arrest migrants.

Several specialists in extremism note that these efforts are reflected in particular in the dissemination of recruitment messages referring to themes or works popular with supporters of this xenophobic and violent ideological movement.

“I think it’s voluntary on the part of the government. Some references are so obscure that it is impossible to know them unless you are a white supremacist or someone who studies them. Ordinary people don’t know these things,” notes Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

The Department of Homeland Security notably distributed last August, as part of a recruitment campaign, a drawing showing Uncle Sam perplexed by signs indicating various directions, including “Invasion” or “Homeland”.

The image was topped by the phrase Which way, American man?which returns, note M^me Beirich, to a 1978 anti-Semitic book titled Which Way Western Man?considered by white supremacists to be a reference work.

Another poster released more recently by the government for recruitment purposes showed a cowboy in front of vast mountains and a stealth bomber with the phrase We’ll have our home againtitle of a song popular with extremist groups.

The song in question accompanied the version of the message broadcast on Instagram, but it was removed from this social network after the New York Times asked about this last week.

Jason Stanley, an American specialist on fascism who left Yale University to settle in Canada after President Donald Trump came to power, notes that the American government actively seeks to recruit “people who share its ideology” and particularly targets supremacist groups in this context.

ICE, he says, is charged with carrying out an “ethnic cleansing” project aimed at “moving non-white immigrants out of the United States” and supposedly offers “dream jobs” for people willing to use violence to “protect” the white population.

M^me Beirich notes that it is impossible to know at this time how many white supremacists may have joined the ranks of ICE, which doubled its workforce in 2025 by recruiting 12,000 additional agents.

Lack of transparency

In a letter sent in mid-January to DHS, Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin echoed these concerns, noting that ICE uses coded messages in its recruitment campaigns “with the aim of attracting members of extremist militias” such as the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers.

On this occasion, he was alarmed by the possibility that people convicted for their role in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 could have joined the ranks of the police after having been pardoned by the president.

The representative requested a detailed list of people matching this profile within DHS, which accused him of wanting to tarnish the image of ICE with his “disgusting” initiative.

The Department also accused American media of “encouraging racism” by evoking possible links between ICE and white supremacists.

Dan Herman, an analyst with the Center for American Progress who previously worked at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, notes that the agency’s screening process for applicants has traditionally been exhaustive and must exclude people from extremist groups. Lie detectors are even used normally, he says, to prevent people linked to criminal groups from obtaining sensitive positions.

Although ICE assures in its official communications that it carries out a rigorous screening process, it is impossible, notes Mr. Herman, to know what is currently happening to possible candidates linked to supremacist groups or to the assault on the Capitol.

ICE did not respond to questions submitted by The Press about this.

The government is seeking, according to Mr. Herman, to give a “political character” to the ICE, which could prove “extremely dangerous”.

The wearing of masks by most agents deployed in the field is also a problem, underlines the analyst, since it harms the transparency and accountability required in the exercise of force by the State.

“In this country, police work is done in full public view. That’s the deal,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security says ICE agents must wear face masks because activists seek to identify and denounce them online by putting their safety at risk.

Only an agent exposed to a specific threat concerning him should be able to resort to wearing a mask, judges Mr. Herman, who does not consider the risk linked to the practice of “ doxxing » as serious enough in itself to justify all-out authorization of the mask.

“Law enforcement officials have nothing to fear if they behave appropriately,” he emphasizes.