Days before an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sparking a firestorm of outrage over President Trump’s immigration crackdown, the Washington Post reported on ICE’s plans to “spend $100 million over a one-year period to recruit gun rights supporters and military enthusiasts through online influencers and a geo-targeted advertising campaign.”
According to the Washington Post, a document distributed to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials last summer identified several methods for recruiting thousands of new ICE agents, including ads targeting people who attend gun shows and UFC fights, listen to “patriotic podcasts,” and show an “interest in guns and tactical gear” — even using “geofencing” to send social media ads to “anyone who set foot near…gun and trade shows.”
As discussed below, ICE’s recruiting efforts appear to mimic the gun industry’s own marketing tactics.
overlap with the gun industry
Per the Washington Post, the ICE recruiting strategy was designed to “flood the market” with TV, radio, podcast, print, and social media ads targeting people interested in “military and veterans’ affairs” as well as “patriotic” and “conservative-leaning” lifestyles. Additionally, the ads target “listeners of conservative radio shows” and “users with an interest in ‘conservative thought leaders, gun rights organizations [and] tactical gear brands.’”
The strategy also involved spending at least $8 million on influencers and live streamers in “tactical/lifestyle enthusiast communities” with largely Gen Z and millennial followers — like the guntubers who help market the gun industry’s products on YouTube.
In other words, it appears that ICE is attempting to tap into the base of support that the gun industry and gun lobby have spent years cultivating, recruiting right-leaning gun rights advocates steeped in culture wars and willing to patrol streets with military-style weapons and body armor.
toxic marketing tactics
Considering that ICE and the gun industry are attempting to reach the same audiences, it is perhaps no coincidence that both rely on podcasts and influencers. But even their ads and social media posts are very similar, conveying their messages with militaristic, hyper-masculine imagery and references to action movies and video games, for example.
used by a character in Sicario.
deadly repercussions
Commentators have said that the “polarizing” ICE recruiting campaign amounts to “fearmongering…propaganda” that “would only attract MAGA radicals.” A transit operator in Long Beach, California, even “removed ICE recruitment ads from its buses and apologized for the ‘uncertainty and fear’ they may have caused.”
But former ICE Director Sarah Saldaña noted that the recruiting campaign could have more serious consequences. According to the Washington Post, she “worries that the speed with which ICE is racing to bring on new hires — coupled with the ad campaign’s framing of the jobs as part of a war — will raise the risk that the agency could attract untrained recruits eager for all-out combat.”
When asked for comment, marketing professor Americus Reed told the Post that ICE is “aiming for that sweet spot of people who’ve got something to prove, who want to have that power, under the guise of patriotism.”
These comments speak loudly about the gun industry’s own marketing efforts, particularly for gun makers who produce military-grade weapons for civilians and then sell the fantasy of “all-out combat” for would-be political and cultural warriors in ads and social media posts.