'It's a war' Inside ICE's media machine

Source: Washington Post

WP EXCLUSIVE

‘It’s a war’
Inside ICE’s media machine

Thousands of internal chat messages show how the agency has raced to satisfy the White House by pumping out viral videos of confrontations and arrests.

By Joyce Sohyun Lee and Drew Harwell
December 23, 2025 at 5:00 a.m. EST Today at 5:00 a.m. EST
19 min

For the Immigration and Customs Enforcement public affairs team, the nighttime operation across metro Houston in October was a gold mine. ... An ICE video producer shadowed agents as they pulled over and handcuffed more than 120 suspected undocumented immigrants, then sent the footage to a private team chatroom.

ICE official 1
Oct. 29, 2:10 p.m.
Arrests are wonderful!
ICE video producer 1
Oct. 29, 2:13 p.m.
Great shooting!

Across thousands of internal ICE messages reviewed by The Washington Post, this kind of celebration has become commonplace. The messages show how the team has worked closely with the White House, which has urged them to produce videos for social media of immigrant arrests and confrontations to portray its push for mass deportation as critical to protecting the American way of life. ... Before officials could post the Houston video, they had to figure out how to frame it. Officials did not know if all the arrestees had criminal records, they wrote in the chats, undermining a slogan the team had worked to promote on social media: that ICE targeted the “Worst of the Worst.”

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For years, this ICE team had run like a routine government communications shop, dispensing public service announcements and press releases few Americans would see. But during President Donald Trump’s second term, ICE’s public affairs arm has rapidly transformed into an influencer-style media machine, churning out flashy videos of tactical operations and immigration raids.
The internal communications reviewed by The Post show how the ICE team has coordinated with the White House, working to satisfy Trump aides’ demands to “flood the airwaves,” as one official urged in the messages, with brash content showing immigrants being chased, grabbed and detained.

They also show federal officials mocking immigrants in crass terms and discussing video edits that might help legitimize the administration’s aggressive stance. The team also knowingly used copyright-protected music without permission from the rights holders, among other techniques designed to boost their online attention.

{snip}

About this story
Videos from ICEGov/X. Some messages were shortened for clarity.
Reporting by Joyce Sohyun Lee and Drew Harwell. Jeremy B. Merrill contributed to this report. Design and development by Stephanie Hays. Design editing by Christian Font. Story editing by Alexis Sobel Fitts and Elyse Samuels. Copy editing by Christopher Rickett.

Joyce Sohyun Lee
Joyce Sohyun Lee is a senior reporter for The Washington Post's Visual Forensics team.@joyceslee
https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/joyce-lee/

Drew Harwell
Drew Harwell is a technology reporter for The Washington Post. His work was honored by the Gerald Loeb Awards in 2024 and the George Polk Awards in 2021.@drewharwell
https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/drew-harwell/

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/ice-social-media-blitz/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f005