Experts concerned about white nationalist imagery in ICE recruitment materials

Some of the images look like World War II recruiting posters. Uncle Sam asking you to defend the homeland.

Others reference a glorified version of the past. White settlers traveling across the planes toward their Manifest Destiny as Native Americans retreat to the shadows.

These are the words and images the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is using to recruit more than 10,000 Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents by the end of the year, which would make it the largest law enforcement agency in the federal government. DHS is also offering signing bonuses of $50,000, student loan repayment and starting salaries as high as $80,000.

These posts have millions of views on social media platforms like X. Experts who study extremist groups are flagging them as dangerous.

Pete Simi is a sociologist at Chapman University who has been studying extremist groups and violence for more than 25 years.

“Propaganda is an art,” he said. “It’s a very powerful way of communicating and it typically obscures the truth. When it’s done effectively, it makes it hard to call it out.”

Ambiguity plays a major role in white supremacist messaging because it allows whoever posts hateful rhetoric to hide behind plausible deniability, Simi said.

Coded language

Simi went on to say that someone who isn’t versed in far-right extremist culture will see an image of Uncle Sam and won’t think twice about it. But the posts DHS is using to recruit ICE agents can be interpreted through a white nationalist lens.

For example, the caption on the post showing settlers expanding westward, the words heritage and homeland are capitalized.

“In white supremacist circles, H.H. stands for Heil Hitler,” Simi said.

Also, the caption contains exactly 14 words, which is a symbolically significant number for people who follow that ideology.

White nationalists use messaging with 14 words as a hidden reference to a famous phrase from the 1980s: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

“It became one of the most central slogans among white supremacists,” Simi said. “They reference it in everything from tattoos, to t-shirts, to emails. It’s just ubiquitous among these folks.”

ICE did not respond to questions from KPBS about the agency’s recruitment efforts and concerns raised by experts like Simi.

Because ambiguity is such a big part of extremist communications, the messages can be interpreted in a variety of ways, Simi said. Whoever posted the image can simply say people are overreacting — it’s just an old painting with a caption that happens to have 14 words.

Which means academics or members of the media cannot say for sure whether something is explicitly supporting extremist ideology.

“Unless you’re able to find the person who created that post and they were to admit that this was intentional, it’s hard to ever definitively say,” Simi said.

Cautionary tale

Historically, the federal government has struggled with rapid expansions to law enforcement agencies.

In the mid-2000s, when Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) workforce grew by 20,000, anti-corruption measures took a back seat to the hiring spree, according to a 2012 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

At the time, agency policy required every employee to undergo an internal affairs review every five years to ensure they were still fit for service.

But CBP employees responsible for those reviews said they conducted "few periodic reinvestigations during fiscal years 2006 to 2010 because resources were focused on meeting mandated hiring goals,” according to the report.

By 2010, the agency had a backlog of 15,000 investigations, according to the report.

During the hiring binge , criminal organizations like drug cartels tried to infiltrate the agency. The 2012 report also notes that corruption convictions among CBP agents increased during that time.

ICE did not respond to questions asking what measure they have in place to ensure standards do not drop during the current expansion.

A change in standards

ICE’s current expansion comes at a unique time for the agency, according to experts like Allie Preston, who studies law enforcement as a senior policy analyst for the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.

“It has turned into a militarized, authoritarian form of policing and I really think it will damage this institution’s ability to continue,” Preston said.

While polling shows there is broad support for arresting and deporting immigrants convicted of violent crime, there is significantly less support for masked agents stopping anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally — even if they have no criminal record.

As part of her research, Preston regularly interviews retired local and federal police officers. Lately, they’ve told her that ICE’s aggressive enforcement tactics are eroding trust between communities and law enforcement.

“They say this is undermining the work of local law enforcement who, in many cases, have had to work really hard to build trust in their communities,” she said.

In addition to the deteriorating trust, Preston is also concerned about the fact that ICE has already lowered hiring, training and oversight standards.

The agency waived age restrictions that previously required applicants to be older than 21 and younger than 37 or 40 depending on the role. DHS officials also cut down ICE’s 18-week training course to eight weeks, and waived Spanish-language requirements, vehicle pursuit courses and other training.

In March, the Trump administration cut staff to DHS’s Office of Civil Liberties and Civil Affairs — which investigated civil rights complaints filed by the public related to DHS and ICE enforcement.

“In light of everything that’s happened, it’s really like a perfect storm of different circumstances that are making policing more dangerous for communities and really undermining the roles that they are supposed to be playing,” Preston said.