President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy masked, armed federal agents to round up community members is one of the more horrifying features of his second term.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) brutal crackdown on undocumented migrants across the country has led many activists, members of the public, and Democratic politicians to characterize the agency as a new secret police. Trump’s ICE conducts raids at immigration courts, workplaces, and on farmland, with agents regularly dressing in plainclothes, wearing masks and face coverings to hide their identities, and eschewing the use of identifying insignia like badges, agency names, and other markers of their affiliation with law enforcement. “This is authoritarian, militarized secret police; this is not what you see in a democratic government,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) said in late June.
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander — who was arrested last month by masked agents while accompanying a man to his immigration hearing — criticized Trump’s “warrantless, plain-clothed ICE agents who hide behind masks” on social media Thursday, adding that he’s proud to support a state bill “to stop ICE from operating in the shadows.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s X account expressed disgust that Lander would compare ICE agents to “secret police,” as DHS put it, calling this rhetoric “despicable” and claiming that agents “verbally identify themselves” and wear labels. The White House put out a press release the same day claiming that “Democrats Inspire Vicious, Escalating Attacks on ICE,” insisting that “attacks have only gotten more brazen in recent days.” In it, the White House calls out Goldman and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson for usage of the term “secret police.”
The administration may publicly dispute the idea that ICE agents are operating like “secret police,” but behind closed doors it’s preferred policy — and a fun meme.
In recent weeks — according to two administration officials and two other Republicans close to the Trump White House — some of the most MAGA contingents of the government have come to embrace, mostly privately, the “secret police” branding as a way to sardonically troll the left’s denunciations of Team Trump and ICE operations.
One Trump administration official tells Rolling Stone that in casual conversations with other Trump aides and advisers, “I’ve definitely said we should get ‘SECRET POLICE’ printed on some T-shirts and merch and make it look kind of badass, but the issue is that it’s harder to get away with than the president’s mugshot or ‘proud deplorable.’”
The second Trump administration official adds that there’s a recurring “joke” they ask colleagues at the office, when soliciting updates on federal immigration operations: What are the secret police up to today? The official notes: “We’re just having a little fun with it. I don’t actually think ICE is the secret police.”
They are certainly having fun with it. One of the sources close to the White House shared a partial screenshot of a group chat, which Rolling Stone confirmed included at least two Trump appointees, in which one MAGA loyalist sent an apparently self-made meme graphic featuring Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the words “Trump’s Secret Police,” and a picture of Sylvester Stallone as Judge Dredd.
Three of these MAGA sources say that they, along with other members of Trump’s orbit and administration, have repeatedly sent each other their favorite pro-ICE and pro-“secret police” memes they have found in hard-right online fever swamps. Some of them have internally pitched ideas for repurposing particularly “based” images for Trump to post to Truth Social, or for the White House or Homeland Security to promote, with little success so far.
This doesn’t mean the White House or Homeland Security isn’t posting its own memes pertaining to ICE”s brutalization of human beings.
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) on Thursday reacted to a video of ICE raiding farmland in California by questioning how many alleged gang members “are waking up at 3 a.m. to pick strawberries? O’yeah, zero!”
“Trump said he’d go after ‘bad hombres,’ but he’s targeting the immigrant farm workers who feed America. Either he lied — or he can’t tell the difference,” Gomez wrote.
The White House responded with an edited photo of Gomez with an open mouth, sobbing. “ThEy’Re JuSt StRaWbErRy PiCkErS,” the caption read. “That ain’t produce, holmes. THAT’S PRODUCT,” the White House wrote, alleging that marijuana is being grown in the fields that were raided.
Later on Friday, the White House posted an image of a poster board set up on the White House lawn with a similar typeface, reading “oMg, diD tHe wHiTE hOuSE reALLy PosT tHiS?” The accompanying text read: “Nowhere in the Constitution does it say we can’t post banger memes.”
The administration’s memeification of their hardline anti-immigration policies has been going on for months. In February, the White House posted a social media video, titled “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight,” mocking undocumented migrants being shackled with long chains and loaded onto an airplane. In March, official White House accounts circulated AI-generated cartoons depicting a crying migrant being arrested by an ICE agent. Already a marker of technological dystopia, the image was even more disturbing given that it was rendered in the art style of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli. In June, DHS posted a video of ICE making arrests set to “Ice, Ice, Baby.”
While making light of deportations has drawn widespread backlash, the White House, particularly its social media team, remains committed to a hyper-online, meme-heavy PR strategy to sell its immigration platform to the public.
The online right is on board. Versions of the phrase “I voted for this” have become celebratory aphorisms and a go-to response to anyone expressing outrage over the conduct of ICE agents. Videos of masked agents conducting raids and manhandling migrants are lauded as exactly the reason Trump’s most devoted supporters returned him to the White House. In one X post with over half a million views, the right-wing commentator Chaya Raichik, who posts as “Libs of TikTok” to over 4 million followers, chastised a Fox News host who said many Republicans “didn’t vote for people to show up at Home Depots. They didn’t vote for people to show up at immigration courts.”
“FALSE,” Raichik wrote. “This is exactly what I voted for! I voted for MASS DEPORTATIONS of every illegal alien.”
When menswear writer Derek Guy acknowledged on X last month that he had come to the United States from Canada as an undocumented migrant in his childhood, Vice President J.D. Vance responded with a meme of Jack Nicholson nodding in response to a user suggesting that Vance had the “opportunity to do the funniest thing ever,” by having Guy deported.
Of course, the president’s advisers, both in and out of government, want to have their fun — but they also are working to blame the left and elected Democrats for any violence that comes ICE’s way during Trump’s often grossly lawless crackdowns.
“This is the bedwetting party. Today’s Democrat Party is hysterical and must face ridicule, but it is also dangerous,” says conservative attorney Mike Davis, a close Trump ally and key figure of the MAGA legal sphere. “Their rhetoric [about ‘secret police’ and other matters] is leading to ambushes of federal law enforcement officials in the line of duty.”
Trump’s administration has accused activists and organizers distributing public notices about ICE activities in local communities or who provide advice to migrants — like the creators of the app ICEBlock — of obstructing justice. Trump mused about arresting California Governor Gavin Newsom amid crackdowns in Los Angeles. Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” threatened to prosecute Ocasio-Cortez after she gave advice to undocumented migrants during an Instagram Live event.
Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) was charged with assaulting, resisting, impeding, and interfering with federal officials after ICE agents arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka during a congressional oversight trip to a New Jersey detention center.
McIver has pleaded not guilty to the charges. “They will not intimidate me,” she said outside the courtroom. “They will not stop me from doing my job.”
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