By Vanguard Staff
WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning to spend $100 million over a one-year period on what it internally describes as a “wartime recruitment” strategy, targeting gun rights supporters and military enthusiasts through online influencers, geo-targeted advertising and promotions tied to sporting events, gun shows and military-adjacent spaces, according to an internal document reviewed by The Washington Post.
The recruitment campaign is designed to rapidly expand ICE’s workforce to support President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda and would seek to dominate media networks and recruitment channels by “flooding the market” with ads on platforms such as Snapchat and Rumble, as well as through live streamers and influencers popular with conservative audiences. The 30-page document describes a plan to target people who have attended UFC fights, listened to patriotic podcasts or shown interest in guns, tactical gear or military culture.
The Department of Homeland Security has publicly promoted its effort to significantly increase ICE staffing, announcing plans to hire more than 10,000 new employees nationwide. ICE currently employs more than 20,000 people, according to the agency’s website. Recruitment messaging on social media has called for applicants willing to perform their “sacred duty” and “defend the homeland” by repelling what the agency has described as “foreign invaders.”
The internal strategy document, reported for the first time by The Washington Post, outlines the scale and aggressiveness of the proposed hiring push, including the use of geofencing technology to deliver ads directly to the mobile phones and social media feeds of people who pass near military bases, NASCAR races, college campuses, and gun and trade shows.
The document circulated among ICE officials shortly after the agency issued a public request for bids seeking contractors capable of using “precise audience targeting, performance media management, and results-driven creative strategies” to accelerate recruitment. The language in the public bid closely mirrored the internal strategy. That same month, DHS awarded nearly $40 million to two marketing firms to support an ICE public affairs “recruitment campaign,” according to federal contracting records.
It remains unclear how much of the $100 million plan has already been executed, but recruitment ads have proliferated online calling on Americans to “answer the call to serve.”
Former ICE Director Sarah Saldaña, who led the agency during the Obama administration, said the approach differs sharply from past hiring efforts, which focused on recruiting from local police departments and sheriff’s offices and emphasized federal public-safety work rather than combat-style messaging.
She said she is concerned that the speed of the hiring process and the campaign’s framing of immigration enforcement as a form of warfare could attract applicants ill-suited to the realities of the job.
“The appeal to law enforcement should not be ‘the quicker we get out there and run over people, the better off this country will be,’” Saldaña said. “That mentality you’re fostering tends to inculcate in people a certain aggressiveness that may not be necessary in 85 percent of what you do.”
ICE deferred comment to Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokeswoman, who did not dispute the document’s figures or descriptions and said she was “thrilled to see the Washington Post highlight … [the] wildly successful ICE recruitment campaign, which is under budget and ahead of schedule.”
McLaughlin said the agency has received more than 220,000 job applications in five months and has issued more than 18,000 tentative job offers. More than 85 percent of the new hires have prior law enforcement experience, she said.
Congress this summer tripled ICE’s enforcement and deportation budget to about $30 billion through passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, accelerating what administration officials have described as the groundwork for the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history. Officials have set a target of 1 million deportations within the first year of Trump’s second term.
To boost recruitment, ICE has eliminated age limits for applicants and offered signing bonuses of up to $50,000. Federal job listings show salaries for many deportation officers ranging from $50,000 to $90,000 annually.
Recruitment ads now span television, radio, print and podcasts, directing viewers to an ICE hiring website that portrays immigration as an existential national threat. “America has been invaded by criminals and predators,” the site states under an image of Uncle Sam. “We need YOU to get them out.”
On social media, administration accounts have paired immigration raid footage with imagery and language borrowed from action movies and video games, casting ICE’s mission as a battle against “enemies … at the gates.” One post reads, “Want to deport illegals with your absolute boys?” Another asks, “Are you going to cowboy up or just lay there and bleed?”
To meet its “rapid hiring” goal of roughly 14,000 new Enforcement and Removal Operations officers, Homeland Security Investigations agents, ICE attorneys and support staff, the strategy calls for sharply targeted digital advertising based on users’ interests and lifestyles.
According to the document, ads would be directed at people interested in “military and veterans’ affairs,” “physical training” and “conservative news and politics,” as well as those whose lifestyles are described as “patriotic” or “conservative-leaning.” The plan calls for targeting listeners of conservative radio, country music and podcasts related to patriotism, men’s interests and true crime, along with users associated with “conservative thought leaders, gun rights organizations [and] tactical gear brands.”
The strategy also proposes spending at least $8 million on online influencers with large Gen Z and millennial followings in the “military families,” “fitness” and “tactical/lifestyle enthusiast” communities. While no specific influencers were named, the document said “former agents, veterans and pro-ICE creators” would host live streams, attend events and post content across Facebook, Instagram, Rumble, X, YouTube, blogs, Substack newsletters and Threads.
The goal, the document said, is to build trust through “authentic peer-to-peer messaging” and to “normalize and humanize careers at ICE through storytelling and lived experiences.” Officials projected the influencer program would generate more than 5,000 applicants at an estimated cost of $1,500 per application.
Advertising plans also include placements on gaming consoles, connected televisions and streaming services such as ESPN, Fox News and Paramount+, as well as in newspapers, on billboards and on box trucks. ICE has already run ads on Google, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook, with Meta’s ad library showing targeting aimed in part at military veterans and entry-level job seekers.
Some of the ads have sparked public backlash. Spotify users have filed hundreds of complaints over ads urging listeners to “fulfill your mission.” A NASCAR viewer wrote on Reddit that seeing ICE ads during live streams prompted them to change the channel and later told The Post they had “never felt such distaste for our government airing such ads.”
Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan, a deputy director at the Migration Policy Institute, said the campaign evokes World War I-era recruitment posters through its use of Uncle Sam and war symbolism.
The rhetoric aligns with the administration’s broader portrayal of mass deportations as a security imperative, she said, but it also obscures the operational and legal realities of immigration enforcement.
“We’ve never seen immigration agencies kind of strip down the policy debates to this level of raw imagery and symbolism,” Banulescu-Bogdan said.
The strategy document’s cover features ICE’s deputy director, Madison Sheahan, wearing a police vest and ICE badge beneath the words “Defend the Homeland.” Sheahan previously served as an aide to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem during her tenure as governor of South Dakota.
The document calls for spending “$100 million within one year” on an “aggressive” recruitment effort prioritizing “speed, scale and conversion at every level.” Public ad-tracking data from Google and Meta show that ICE’s spending on those platforms so far is only a fraction of the proposed total. McLaughlin did not respond to questions about how much money has already been spent or whether the strategy has been altered.
Beyond demographic targeting, the plan identifies New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago and Boston as priority locations for recruitment, even as those cities have experienced intense ICE activity and large anti-deportation protests. The New Orleans field office, which oversees nine detention facilities in Louisiana, is slated to recruit up to 1,000 removal officers, the largest single local target.
ICE has also hosted hiring events nationwide. At a Texas job fair earlier this year, a former mixed martial arts fighter told The Post he was eager to “work with these guys that are going to arrest you, slam your face on the pavement and send you home.”
The strategy further outlines recruitment efforts at major sporting and cultural events, including NASCAR races, UFC events and the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. While DHS did not confirm which events proceeded as planned, ICE ads aired during several broadcasts. “ICE commercial during the UFC event tonight?! How gross,” one user wrote on X in October.
The recruitment campaign is separate from other DHS advertising efforts promoting Trump’s immigration agenda and urging undocumented immigrants to leave the country. Federal records show DHS has awarded more than $200 million this year to two marketing firms connected to Republican political consultants. Meta’s ad library indicates DHS has spent more than $1 million in the past 90 days on “self-deportation” ads targeted at users interested in Latin music, Spanish-language content and Mexican cuisine.
Those ads have also prompted criticism. On Pandora message boards, users described them as “fearmongering … propaganda.” One user said she was inundated with ads telling her to “go home,” despite being a U.S. citizen.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, have criticized ICE’s “polarizing recruitment ads,” warning they could “only attract MAGA radicals.” Some platforms have taken action as well. Earlier this month, a Long Beach, California, transit operator removed ICE recruitment ads from its buses, apologizing for the “uncertainty and fear” they may have caused.
Americus Reed, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, compared the campaign to the military’s former “Army of One” advertisements.
“They’re aiming for that sweet spot of people who’ve got something to prove, who want to have that power, under the guise of patriotism,” Reed said.
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Well, there ya go, if you want a good job with benefits. Probably bonus points if you speak Spanish, which some might find ironic. Except, perhaps to the Hispanics that increasingly supported Trump in the last election.
I thought about bringing this up to my (Hispanic) neighbor (a young guy), who was initially interested in joining the Highway Patrol. (But apparently, didn’t pursue that or was weeded-out; not sure which.)
My guess (in speaking with him a number of times) is that he might be more supportive of Trump than I am.