The evil absurdity of ICE’s push to recruit law enforcement officers
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You may think you’ve seen the worst of ICE’s commercials touting their crusade against your local pushcart vendor and car wash employee.
Grainy footage of handcuffed immigrants. Soft-focus, slow-motion portraits of agents. Menacing intonations about an invasion that must be stopped at all costs. Repeated declarations of going after the “worst of the worst,” even if they’re mostly — and very clearly— not.
But ICE has now entered the cops-poaching part of their deport-a-thon.
And the latest migra ad befouling L.A.-area television stations is the most pathetic — and chilling — one yet.
“Attention law enforcement” a robotic voice announces over an opening scene of a flashing siren in what looks like a tough part of an unidentified city. The camera cuts to a blue-tinted law enforcement badge as the words, “You took an oath to protect and serve” flash on the screen. The deep-toned announcer repeats the words.
Over 30 seconds, ICE claims “dangerous illegals walk free” in cities due to sanctuary policies not allowing police and sheriff’s departments to go after them. But if you join la migra, the commercial asserts, cops can finally “catch the worst of the worst” and “join the mission to protect America.” Promises — a $50,000 signing bonus, the forgiving of student loans and “generous” benefits — pile on top of each other toward the end of the ad with a plug for ICE’s website.
“Fulfill your mission,” it concludes, Terminator-like.
The majority of people held in the June immigration raids in Southern California were not criminals. Nearly half of them were Mexicans and most were men.
Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when ... they stop coming for you — because cops decide they’re going to start chasing after a tamale lady or a gardener with three Marine sons.
The commercial pushes the Trumpian idea that undocumented immigrants are the ne plus ultra of criminality in this country, even though study after study over decades have shown that they’re less likely to commit crimes than American citizens. It absurdly implies that arresting actual criminals — being in this country illegally is generally a civil matter — isn’t enough for local law enforcement to consider themselves true defenders of public safety. And it suggests that ICE is the only government agency that truly lives up to the oath to protect and serve Americans.
(Insert, “Sure, Jan” GIF here.)
Tinseltown has made many great films about the exploits of cops: “L.A Confidential,” “Heat,” “Serpico,” “Training Day,” just to name a few.
But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie where some “loose cannon” cop pops out of a Penske rental truck to grab a “bad hombre” outside Home Depot trying to make a few bucks roofing your house.
Hint to Hollywood: There’s this fella named Dean Cain just ready to be cast in that role.
ICE didn’t respond to my multiple questions about its commercial — where it’s airing, how much is it costing taxpayers and why they made an ad specifically tailored to law enforcement in the first place. The campaign launched in mid-August across the U.S. but got my attention only last week, when it began to air seemingly every hour during KCAL Channel 9’s three-hour evening news block.
La migra has been trying to hire anyone with a pulse to join them ever since Trump’s Big Bloated Bill allocated an extra $170 billion in immigration enforcement spending over the next decade. Recruitment fairs are traveling the country like some xenophobic Lollapalooza in the quest to hire 10,000 agents — they’ll be offering jobs to an army of Roombas next.
ICE’s attempted nabbing of police and sheriff’s departments for their staff isn’t making local law enforcement leaders happy.
In August, USA Today reported that ICE sent an email solicitation to deputies nationwide, leading the head of the National Sheriff’s Assn. to call the move “either galactically stupid or purposefully malicious.”
Deputy Tony Meraz, a director for the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, didn’t get that email but saw ICE’s commercial on YouTube and a similarly themed billboard. He hasn’t heard of any colleagues raring to go after taqueros and flower ladies but worries that la migra’s pitch “is going to shrink our applicant pool. If it somehow seems like local law enforcement is being federalized, [being a local officer] might not attract people who might want to serve in their local community.
“I don’t want to make it political,” Meraz added, “but if [the White House] can put commercials for federal law enforcement, maybe they can subsidize local law enforcement with our hiring and recruitment and retention issues.”
Thousands of applicants turned out for a two-day hiring expo for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Arlington, Texas, with many hoping to start a career as a deportation officer.
That’s the underlying evil of ICE’s “Attention law enforcement” ad. Donald Trump claims he loves them — but allowing la migra try to woo cops at a time where many departments face staffing shortages makes neighborhoods more dangerous, not less. That seems no concern to Trump, who’s continuing his scheme to transform every sector of American life charged with protecting this country into a deportation machine — or else.
Take a federal judge’s recent decision deeming that Trump’s National Guard invasion of L.A. this summer was illegal and a seeming prelude to creating a “national police force.” As reported by my fellow columnista Anita Chabria, buried in the 52-page ruling was a reference to sworn testimony by the man who headed that deployment, Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman. He replied “yes” when asked if U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino questioned his “loyalty to the country” after Sherman initially hesitated about leading a temporary occupation of MacArthur Park in July because it would cause chaos.
The man who ultimately approved the show of farce was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who also ordered hundreds of Marines to occupy parts of L.A. in the wake of anti-migra protests. He recently accepted a Justice Department request to send up to 600 military lawyers to serve as temporary immigration judges. They’re supposed to expedite the deportation of the tens of thousands of people currently in detention camps and go through millions of backlogged cases even though few of them have experience with immigration law.
I’m telling you, the Trump administration would poach Lionel Hutz from “The Simpsons” for its lawyer ranks if it helped them catapult more immigrants out of the country.
Legal experts told Anita that the move possibly runs afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the military from taking on domestic and immigration law enforcement. But it’s never about due process for Trump. It’s about dominion, damn the Constitution.
Trump and his masked goons claim all they want to do with their deportation deluge is to make communities safer. The irony of ICE’s cop commercial airing in Los Angeles is that if there’s a city that knows terrorizing undocumented immigrants doesn’t help to stop crime, it’s Los Angeles.
In 1979, the LAPD implemented Special Order 40, a directive that prevented officers from asking people about their immigration status in order to foster better relations with residents in the name of fighting crime. The chief who implemented it? That legendary hippie, Daryl Gates.
Special Order 40 is still in effect 46 years later and has never faced a significant internal or external revolt. Police Chief Jim McDonnell has repeatedly stressed his department wants nothing to do with playing migra even as critics point out that ICE has identified and deported people by using fingerprints that the LAPD uploads to a national database.
If law enforcement in a city with a significant population of undocumented immigrants would rather focus on catching actual criminals instead of chasing after people with no legal status, what makes ICE think they’d want to join them?
LAPD leaders say the department has strict limits on cooperating with immigration officials, but court records show federal authorities are nevertheless using local police information sent to national databases to find new targets.
Tom Saggau, spokesperson for the union that represents LAPD officers, said he needed to “pop a Tums and get back” to me about ICE’s push, then never responded to a follow-up (try Pepto-Bismol next time!). Meraz said his members are “not concerned with the national stuff, they want to do the local and state law” — but ICE is looping them in anyway.
He and other deputies accompanied la migra “several times” over the summer during immigration raids. “They’d call us for support in the sense of ‘We’re getting overrun by protesters and bad actors — can you guys handle?’
“We don’t get into the politics,” Meraz said again. “But our people do not want to get involved in federal enforcement.”
Put that in a commercial.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- ICE’s recruitment campaign targeting law enforcement officers represents an “evil absurdity” that uses pathetic and chilling tactics to poach cops from local departments during a time when many face staffing shortages
- The commercials promote false narratives by characterizing undocumented immigrants as “dangerous illegals” and the “worst of the worst,” despite studies showing they commit crimes at lower rates than American citizens
- The recruitment effort undermines local law enforcement by potentially shrinking their applicant pools and making neighborhoods more dangerous rather than safer, particularly when departments already struggle with hiring and retention
- Trump’s administration is systematically transforming every sector of American life charged with protecting the country into a “deportation machine,” creating what amounts to a national police force that violates constitutional principles
- Local law enforcement agencies, exemplified by the LAPD’s Special Order 40 implemented in 1979, have long recognized that terrorizing undocumented immigrants doesn’t help fight crime and prefer focusing on actual criminals rather than immigration status
- The broader strategy represents a concerning shift toward dominion over due process, with military personnel being repurposed as immigration judges despite lacking relevant experience, potentially violating the Posse Comitatus Act
Different views on the topic
- ICE positions its recruitment efforts as necessary to “protect communities” and “arrest the worst of the worst,” framing agents as “real-life superheroes” who answer their country’s call to defend America[3]
- Supporters like actor Dean Cain advocate for joining ICE as a way to “defend your homeland” while receiving substantial benefits including $50,000 signing bonuses and student loan forgiveness, presenting immigration enforcement as patriotic duty[3]
- Agricultural industry perspectives acknowledge the structural dependence on immigrant labor while suggesting policy solutions such as expanding the H-2A temporary visa program, which could provide “patriotic and orderly migration” where workers remain under state control without paths to citizenship[1]
- Historical analysis demonstrates that attempts to replace immigrant agricultural workers with American citizens, such as the 1965 A-TEAM program, have consistently failed due to the harsh working conditions and low pay, suggesting that immigration enforcement must be balanced with economic realities[2]
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