‘A publicity stunt’: activists decry Trump’s immigration raids marketed as entertainment

Just days after being sworn in as Donald Trump’s secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, well coiffed and clad in tactical gear, popped up in New York City before dawn with a message for Americans – and her boss, the US president.

“Live this AM from NYC. I’m on it,” Noem wrote on X, the first in a series of social media posts documenting her ride-along with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents and officers from other federal agencies as they conducted a raid at a residential building in the Bronx on Tuesday. Hours later, in a piece-to-camera video, she declared the morning’s mission a success: “We are getting the dirtbags off the streets.”

Government-issued pictures were distributed to the media, and federal agencies including Ice, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) posted images on X.

No official statistics were issued for the New York raids that day. But the publicity blitz has helped fuel a sense of what Trump’s border “czar”, Tom Homan, vowed would be “shock and awe” from day one.

Trump has mobilized officers from nearly every federal law enforcement agency and the US military to help carry out his long-promised mass deportation campaign. But he is also relying on his vast army of rightwing media personalities and influencers to make sure Americans tune in for the crackdown.

Immigration advocates and activists say the Cops TV-style content is a scare tactic.

“This is a publicity stunt to them,” said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition advocacy group, who derided Noem for “cosplaying as a law enforcement officer”.

“This has never been about security and safety,” he added. “This is about cruelty, and that’s the point.”

The Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin was given what the network billed as exclusive access to an Ice op in Boston last week.

Phil McGraw, the conservative daytime TV host known as Dr Phil, “embedded” with Ice agents and Homan for an operation in Chicago last weekend. In a surreal exchange, McGraw begins to question one of the men who is being placed under arrest. The man then pauses the exchange, suddenly recognizing the celebrity psychologist as “Dr Phil”.

“The administration is trying to make these operations into a reality show, dragging a daytime talkshow host with them,” said Chuy Garcia, a Democratic congressman of Illinois, at a press conference in the city on Wednesday. “This is about optics, not public safety. It’s a deliberate strategy to desensitize the public. It is a calculated cruelty.”

Noem has defended the media strategy, calling it an “accountability measure” for Americans who want to see aggressive enforcement action and she committed to joining future patrols.

“It’s not a spectacle,” she told CBS News. “This is our nation’s law enforcement – judicial process. The scales of justice are equally applied to everybody. We want transparency on this.”

Reporter ride-alongs are not new – Fox’s Melugin embedded with Ice on a raid under the Biden administration – nor is watching a cabinet secretary promote the president’s agenda on social media.

But Trump’s “made for TV” (and TikTok) approach – CNN reported earlier this week that agencies assisting with Ice’s immigration enforcement efforts were advised to be camera-ready – have felt markedly different than previous eras of immigration enforcement, activists and advocates say.

“Our pain is being framed as entertainment,” Andrew Herrera, a local workers’ rights and immigration advocate in Chicago, said, adding: “I believe what he wants is enough of us to feel afraid and pushed into the shadows.”

The first week of the administration began with sweeping directives closing off routes for tens of thousands of refugees, asylum seekers and people trying to enter the country lawfully, while the targeted Ice enforcement actions involving smaller numbers of immigrants were carried out with maximum marketing. Ice raids are now ramping up steadily, however, amid the news that Trump wasn’t satisfied with the early days’ results.

The agency has started publishing a daily tally of arrests that have not been independently verified and do not distinguish between those with a criminal record and those who lack legal authorization to remain in the country, but have no criminal record.

Administration officials have repeatedly stated they are prioritizing the detention and deportations of undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes. Yet NBC reported only half of the 1,179 people cited as arrested by Ice across the US last Sunday were considered “criminal arrests”.

When asked about figures, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that anyone in the country without documentation could be a target.

“They illegally broke our nation’s laws, and, therefore, are criminals as far as this administration goes,” Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday. “I know the last administration didn’t see it that way, so it’s a big culture shift in our nation to view someone who breaks our immigration laws as a criminal. But that’s exactly what they are.”

Being in the US without legal documentation is considered a civil offense, not a crime and advocates argue that people have the right to ask for asylum regardless of how they enter the country.

The administration has been careful to highlight operations involving the arrests of suspects, nearly all men, accused of violent crimes. A White House X account has publicized details of certain arrests, sharing posts with photographs of the suspects and the cities where Ice agents made the arrest. “Promises made. Promises kept,” the administration captioned a photograph showing deportees, handcuffed and shackled, boarding military aircraft. Typically such deportations had used civilian flights where the planes actually hold greater numbers.

Shana Kushner Gadarian, a professor at Syracuse University who specializes in political communication, said the way the administration had framed its raids was an attempt to shape public perception by driving the narrative that “immigrants are criminals” who “don’t belong in the United States”, she said. Reports from Newark and elsewhere suggest that the administration is casting a far wider net, even ensnaring US citizens. As the public learns more about the families, communities and businesses disrupted by these enforcement actions, support for these operations may begin to shift.

Meanwhile, Cristian Avila has been struck by a sense of deja vu since Trump’s return to power last week. Avila, a Daca recipient who is the national programs director for the Poder Latinx advocacy group, grew up in Arizona during a period of intense anti-immigrant backlash in the state. Figures like the former Maricopa county sheriff Joe Arpaio used headline-grabbing tactics to “round up” undocumented immigrants, and a court would later rule, racially profile Latinos.

At the time, Avila’s family relied on a system for routinely checking in with each other. Panic would spread if someone didn’t answer their phone.

“It caused and put fear on millions of families across the state, and now we’re seeing that on a national scale,” he said. But he said there was a silver lining: the community began to organize. They chased Arpaio from office and then started to build their own political clout in the battleground state. Trump controversially pardoned the sheriff but he has failed to make a political comeback.

“It puts fear,” he said, “but it also forces us to take matters into our own hands and make the change that is needed for us to have a better community.”