The pinned post on the X account of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is an image of Uncle Sam with the caption “We Need You.”
“America has been invaded by criminals and predators,” the post reads. “We need YOU to get them out.”
DHS posts on Instagram are similar. One pinned post features a highly produced video that starts with a family walking in a field and urges viewers to “defend” their “homeland”. Another displays an image of a younger and older man in military garb, designed to look like a first world war-era army recruitment poster. Under it, in big bold capital letters: “NO AGE CAP JOIN ICE NOW”. The caption: “We’re taking father/son bonding to a whole new level.”
Protect. Serve. Deport. https://t.co/nZkBEj3GGi pic.twitter.com/2nNr5nh3vx
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) August 5, 2025
The posts are part of the DHS’s push to quickly hire more than 10,000 new US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers and 3,000 border patrol agents in order to meet the Trump administration’s aggressive arrest and deportation quotas.
To meet those goals, the DHS has made several changes to its job and eligibility requirements in what experts say is a rushed attempt to expand its hiring pool – including appealing to a younger set of potential recruits. In addition to lowering the age minimum to 18, DHS is working to incentivize more hires with promises of forgiving up to $60,000 in college loans.
And it has heavily invested in advertising on social media. In early August, 404 Media spotted Ice documents that solicited pitches from advertising companies that could help the agency “dominate digital media with messages that reflect the urgency and scale of Ice’s hiring effort”.
Ice identified three audiences as its targets: former military and law enforcement; legal professionals; gen Z and early-career professionals. The deadline for companies to submit proposals was 11 August.
It is unclear whether Ice has selected a vendor, though there have been no new posted contracts as of yet and Meta’s ad library, which is one of the few public repositories of brand advertising activity on social media, has no new entries for the DHS or Ice as of the publication of this article.
Meanwhile, Ice and the DHS have already been ramping up their social media recruitment efforts on various platforms.
Its photos and videos depict the US at war, with Ice and border patrol agents part of a heroic effort to save the country from criminals and predators, even though numerous studies have shown immigrants commit fewer crimes than those born in the US. Many of the ads conjure a feeling of nostalgia for a country that once was. And some have thinly veiled references to white supremacist messages.
America Needs You. https://t.co/nZkBEj3GGi pic.twitter.com/vCaTqWZRH3
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) August 4, 2025
Marketing experts say that taken together, the various posts show a scattered strategy, probably because the agency is targeting such a wide array of audiences.
The posts depict a country that the younger generation has never known, says Mara Einstein, the author of Hoodwinked, How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults. “This is a generation that has lived through permacrisis and has never known that shiny city on the hill that people of older generations think of when they think of the US,” Einstein said. “Even if you have a dual target, advertisers have to ask how do you talk to both of these people.”
Many of the ads juxtapose Uncle Sam and other American symbols with images of mostly brown immigrants being arrested. On X, DHS regularly posts intentionally antagonistic memes commonly used in far-right corners of the internet in its responses to other people’s posts.
The Promise of America is worth Protecting.
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) July 30, 2025
The Future of our Homeland is worth Defending. pic.twitter.com/wkpSvZZlT7
The overall campaign strategy also appears to attempt to replicate in some ways the US army’s “Be All You Can Be” campaign – likening the recruitment of immigration enforcement officers to a military recruitment campaign and an act of patriotism, experts say. One video shows supposed immigration officers training in a military facility and people jumping out of planes. The caption: “Hunt cartels. Save America.”
In its latest video the DHS boasts about its 5,000th arrest in Los Angeles that starts with Hollywood-style footage of immigration officers putting on their military tactical gear and ends with a compilation of mostly brown men being arrested or detained.
“The targeting of Black and brown immigrants with false information and using pictures of Uncle Sam as if this is military recruitment at the time of war is an unprecedented use of propaganda for civil immigration enforcement,” said Nayna Gupta, the policy director at the American Immigration Council.
“The social media messaging links this anti-immigration narrative to patriotism to some all-American identity,” Gupta continued. “But part of the American identity has always been this is a country that welcomes people that want to build something better.”
While the messaging is muddled, the choice to post images or text that either enrage or excite an already polarized audience is a strategy that builds on Donald Trump’s ongoing success with capturing attention on social media by posting hateful and inflammatory content, according to Ramesh Srinivasan, aUCLA professor of information studies.
“It’s a messaging strategy that has worked well within algorithmic systems that are optimized for content that is predicted to capture attention,” Srinivasan said. “It’s a negative populism that has been part of the Trump team’s strategy from the get-go.”
The campaign also seeks to put a glossy sheen on the realities of working for Ice – making it look like a scene out of Bad Boys while simultaneously demonizing and dehumanizing America’s immigrant communities, experts say.
It’s not a totally unprecedented approach to recruitment for the DHS to take but it’s historically been a far cry from the realities of working for Ice, according to Michelle Brané, a former DHS official under the Biden administration. “The recruitment videos have always looked like an episode of Cops, so these new videos are not necessarily that different,” Brane said. “It was always about: ‘We’re going to catch the bad guys,’ with videos of raiding a house, a car chase, wrestling someone to the ground. And that always seemed problematic.
“Many people in the field were very dissatisfied with the day-to-day of their jobs,” Brané said of her time working at the DHS. “They did arrest criminals, but a very large part of their job is just processing regular people who have immigration violations or who crossed the border and are requesting asylum. But they’d insist, ‘That’s not the job I signed up for – I signed up to catch the bad guys.’”
Iced out. 🥶 pic.twitter.com/xhexqgmbzS
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) August 14, 2025
Experts worry that the rapid pace of recruitment, paired with the polarizing messaging the DHS is using will attract a group of people desperate for work who may share the xenophobic and anti-immigrant stances of the administration.
“This feels like a multi-level marketing thing where you’re going to get the people who are really vulnerable and desperate and looking for some type of job who is willing to do this,” said Einstein.
It may further push Ice, as an agency, into an extreme political posture, Gupta said.
“What’s worrisome is that any folks that this kind of dehumanizing propaganda would work on are more likely to share xenophobic views of non-citizens,” Gupta said. “Combined with decreasing training and vetting practices by Ice as they look to speed up hiring creates a situation where the agency is likely to be hiring enforcement officers who have an explicit history of racism or don’t meet the usual standards of law enforcement officers.”
