ICE officials feel the public’s trust has been lost.
USA TODAY spent several days following ICE agents in Kansas City to learn more about their targeting and arrests of immigrants.
The portrayal on television could not be more different.
One recent TV ad aired on MSNOW and CNN featured images of the January 2026 killings of Renee Good and Alex Preti by federal agents in Minneapolis, as well as news footage of people violently confronting each other on the street. The montage is punctuated with excerpts from podcaster Joe Rogan asking, “Are we really going to become the Gestapo?”
Another high-profile ad that aired in some television markets presented the opposite perspective, depicting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as everyday community members doing a difficult job. The film ends with cinematic footage of unmasked investigators calmly escorting the detainee to a police vehicle.
These are contradictory portrayals aimed at shaping public opinion against a controversial agency whose aggressive tactics have caused shock and outrage across the country, with polls showing that nearly two-thirds of Americans now think ICE has gone too far. Advocacy groups have long used advocacy efforts like this to challenge public policy or shine a spotlight on social ills, but the Primarily Critical ICE-Focused Spot adds a new twist to the strategy by focusing directly on federal agencies and their agents.
“I’m having a hard time thinking of any precedent,” said Travis Redoubt, a professor of government and public policy at Washington State University in Pullman and an expert on political advertising. “This seems like something new.”
The ads have been airing in recent months as part of a six-figure campaign spearheaded largely by advocacy groups who have been affected by ICE operations or who feel they have a moral obligation to take a stand. Some aired in cities targeted for increased detention and deportation measures, such as Chicago, New Orleans and Charlotte, while others focused on streaming services, such as Spotify, that post ICE job ads.
Most broadcasts last a few weeks at most, but are still available on social media and video sharing platforms like YouTube.
In November, the global advocacy group Women’s March created a one-minute ad aimed at people who work as ICE agents, depicting a young girl greeting her father with a confused look on his face as he returns home from work, with the word “ICE” visible on his shirt.
When she asked about her day, her father bent down and hugged her. The father’s mind flashed through television footage of crying mothers and children, masked agents smashing car windows, and people being thrown to the ground.
“A mask can’t hide you from your neighbors, your children, or God,” a voiceover says in the ad, titled “What Will You Say?” “They’ll know. They can leave before the shame comes home.”
That same month, a spot produced by the progressive nonprofit Move on Civic Action spoofed an ICE job ad by advertising, “Do you think it’s good to tear gas kids? Shoot dead pastors? Or kidnap grandmas? Then you’ve got exactly what Donald Trump is looking for.”
And in December, an ad created by the national civil and religious rights group Interfaith Alliance featured the voice of a child singing “Holy Night,” interspersed with footage of family and community holiday gatherings, interspersing news footage of ICE agents violently detaining people and bursting through doors brandishing guns.
The interfaith alliance’s video, titled “Choose Love, not ICE,” has been viewed nearly 2 million times on YouTube and was aired in Charlotte, New Orleans and other ICE-targeted markets, as well as on NBC’s Saturday Night Live Christmas special.
“We also made a small purchase on Fox News in West Palm Beach, in case the president happened to be watching,” said the group’s CEO, the Rev. Paul Brandeis Rauschenbusch.
Rauschenbusch said the ad was intended to galvanize faith communities and others against ICE tactics, including the Department of Homeland Security’s “almost obscene” use of Bible verses in social media posts promoting ICE enforcement.
The apparent contrast between the voices of children singing beloved hymns and the militaristic actions of government agencies was intended to “frame this as a tough choice to understand how your faith is being used and what your faith requires of you,” he said.
“It’s really about asking who we want to be as a country,” Rauschenbusch said. “There have been times when it was critical for faith communities to emerge around national politics, whether it was war or civil rights, and this is one of those moments.”
ICE crash depiction
Steven Medovic, a government professor at Franklin Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, said the ad essentially treats ICE as a policy, and while critics aren’t necessarily calling for ICE to be abolished, they argue the action goes too far. As such, their pedigree lies in campaigns of the past several years aimed at swaying public sentiment about federal policy, he said.
“While the focus on specific institutions is unique, what is consistent with the ads in older issues is that they are about policy choices that were actually made,” he says.
Medovic described the move as similar to the 2025 ad produced by VoteVets, which criticized veterans’ layoffs by Elon Musk’s now-disbanded Department of Government Efficiency, and the “Harry and Louise” ad campaign developed in the mid-1990s to oppose the Clinton administration’s national health care reform efforts.
An interesting outlier, he said, is a pro-ICE ad attributed to a shadowy group called American Sovereignty. Social media posts indicate it was driven during the Super Bowl in some markets.
The 30-second spot shows footage of people celebrating children’s parties, playing cards and coaching baseball, while a narrator describes them as friends, neighbors, sons, fathers, Little League coaches and veterans, before mentioning their jobs as ICE agents.
“They are removing violent criminals from our streets and neighborhoods,” the voiceover says. “This is a dangerous and difficult job. But ICE has one mission: to make America a safer place to live. And that’s what they’re working on.”
According to its website, American Sovereignty’s mission is to strengthen border security through collaboration with law enforcement, policy makers, and community leaders. It does not list leadership, staff, headquarters, funding sources or other identifying information, and the organization did not respond to questions from USA TODAY.
“We don’t know who’s behind it, but it’s clear they’re trying to improve ICE’s image as an agency,” Medovic said. “This may be in the mold of past Pentagon advertising for recruiting purposes, portraying the military in a positive light to attract new recruits, but it’s actually a response to public sentiment against ICE, and as such is quite unique.”
Comparisons with ‘Gestapo’ prompted government agency action
CEO Haley Soifer said it was in mid-January that Jewish Democratic Council of America leaders heard Joe Rogan’s views on ICE and knew the organization had to take action.
The 30-second ad titled “It’s Gone Too Far” featuring Logan’s comparison to “Gestapo” was released on February 9 and aired on MS NOW and CNN. They are calling on President Trump to “stop the abuse” and “investigate the killing.”
“Hearing Joe Rogan compare ICE’s actions to the Gestapo resonated with us,” Soifer said. “We have seen the White House use white supremacist dog whistles in its ICE recruitment efforts, invoking neo-Nazi slogans and white supremacist memes in deeply disturbing ways. We know from the darkest moments of our history where that will lead, and we will never allow it to repeat itself.”
She said the ad was in line with the group’s call for members to engage with political leaders on the issue, but that it was “not a campaign ad.” “It does not mention any candidate or party. This is part of a larger advocacy effort to rein in the policies of the current administration.”
President Trump announced on February 13 that ICE would be withdrawing its agents from Minneapolis after the controversial videotaped killings of Good and Preti sparked a spike in deaths. The incident sparked a fierce backlash, with many seeing the government as trying to falsely portray them as at fault.
One of the goals of the ad was to encourage its retraction, but Soifer said, “There has yet to be a transparent investigation into the killing, and there has been no accountability for what appears to be the unprovoked killing of an American citizen. This is a step in the right direction, but we still have a ways to go.”
