2 weeks ago
In November 2025, a TV advertisement began moving successful Charlotte, North Carolina, and Palm Beach, Florida.
In it, a small woman pinch blond hairsbreadth successful a ponytail lies connected her belly, moving connected a coloring book. A adjacent TV blares pinch images of immigrants being brutalized by ICE agents. The beforehand doorway opens and nan woman bounces up, rushing complete to hug her begetter and asks: “Daddy, really was your day?” while nan camera reveals ICE insignia connected his shirtsleeve. The voiceover begins: “A disguise can’t hide you from your neighbors, your children and God. You tin locomotion away, earlier nan shame follows you home.”
The advertisement was paid for by Women’s March, a non-partisan non-profit, which, according to its ngo statement, “transforms women into feminists”.
“We mobilize women connected nan issues that matter to us,” says Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive head of Women’s March. “And ICE, obviously, was really important to us.”
Women person been “the extremity of nan spear” successful anti-ICE organizing, Carmona says. When 37-year-old US national Renee Good was changeable and killed by nan ICE enforcement serviceman Jonathan Ross successful Minneapolis, Minnesota, earlier this year, a caller acronym emerged successful rightwing circles to picture specified protesters: Awful, for “affluent achromatic female municipality liberal”. (The word seems to person originated from nan blimpish Christian commentator Erick Erickson, who called Good an Awful successful a post connected X soon aft nan attack.)
“After nan serviceman changeable Renee Good, he walked distant and called her a ‘fucking bitch’,” Carmona says. In nan weeks that followed, Carmona felt “a batch of nan sermon was actually, ‘Well, was she a fucking bitch aliases not?’” It was intelligibly a women’s issue.
With their advertisement campaign, Carmona and Women’s March wanted to dive deeper into what motivates ICE agents. “We started reasoning astir nan civilized imperative,” she says, “but besides nan group who are choosing to subordinate this brutality, possibly because of economical incentives.” The Trump administration’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act offered a $50,000 signing prize for caller ICE recruits, on pinch 25% “premium pay” summation supra guidelines net and up to $60,000 successful student indebtedness repayments.
The anti-ICE advertisement is now being shown successful much markets, appearing successful cardinal clip slots from El Paso to Miami, Atlanta and New Jersey – anyplace nan beingness of ICE is being felt.
Women’s March is 1 of a number of groups and organizations that judge 1 of nan champion ways to situation ICE is to entreaty to nan morality of its agents and imaginable recruits. But location are soft and difficult approaches to this tactic. Some activists compassionately entreaty to a consciousness of basal humanity successful nan genuine dream that ICE agents mightiness beryllium healed truthful arsenic not to harm others. Others use feelings of shame and guilt successful a fire-and-brimstone measurement – precisely to make agents consciousness bad.
Many critics would reason that ICE’s execution of their anti-immigration instruction is truthful unprincipled that its agents are not tin of feelings of contrition aliases remorse. But Peter Pedemonti, head of nan New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia, an migrant authorities group that has been organizing against ICE successful caller months, believes there’s still hope. “Shame is useful,” he says. “That [Women’s March] commercialized is showing that ICE agents are successful misalignment. But location is simply a way to treatment and turning back.”
A faith-based statement (Pedemonti himself is simply a Catholic), New Sanctuary uses organizing strategies that relationship for nan basal humanity of ICE agents. For much than 20 weeks, nan group has been hosting play candlelit vigils extracurricular nan agency’s Philadelphia headquarters. “The organization is coming together to believe for nan families impacted by ICE,” Pedemonti says. “And besides to believe for ICE agents. To believe for conversion, and nan softening of heart. If we want our authorities to walk policies that are based connected emotion and justness and seeing everyone’s humanity and dignity, past we request to exemplary that and enactment that way.”
Recovering from ‘moral injury’
The modern history of American subject and policing offers warnings astir conscionable really devastating shame tin be. This emotion of profound guilt carried backmost from conflict zones has its ain diagnosis. Some experts telephone it “moral injury”, a word coined by Jonathan Shay, who served arsenic a unit psychiatrist astatine nan US Department of Veterans Affairs for much than 20 years. It offers a model for knowing nan conscience-violating, sometimes wholly soul-breaking ramifications of definite convulsive and arguable missions.
In nan years since American troops withdrew from Vietnam and declared nan full run successful south-east Asia an abject failure, doctors and psychiatrists began noticing a shape among returned veterans. There were, of course, nan telltale signs of post-traumatic accent upset (PTSD): disturbed thoughts, nightmares, irritability, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and an acutely heightened fight-or-flight response. But location was thing else, too. It was a emotion among soldiers of not conscionable being subjected to extreme, psychologically shattering circumstances, but of doing thing that violated their ain consciousness of correct and wrong.
As outlined successful Shay’s 1994 book Achilles successful Vietnam: Combat Trauma and nan Undoing of Character, “moral wounded is an basal portion of combat trauma that leads to lifelong psychological injury. Veterans tin usually retrieve from horror, fearfulness and condolences erstwhile they return to civilian life, truthful agelong arsenic ‘what’s right’ has not been violated.”
Given nan Vietnam war’s level of violence, and nan conflict’s discredited justification by American governmental elites, galore who served struggled to travel to position pinch acts they committed, which they saw arsenic profoundly immoral. These feelings were amplified by nan war’s unpopularity successful nan US, and nan consciousness among troops that they were not being supported by civilians backmost home. Subsequent subject boondoggles – successful Afghanistan, Iraq and Mogadishu – only compounded these incidences of acute civilized injury.
The word whitethorn look a small euphemistic: a measurement of absolving perpetrators (or bystanders) of convulsive acts undertaken successful uniform. It’s a grace seldom afforded offenders successful civilian life. You don’t really perceive astir “murderer’s trauma” aliases “arsonist’s remorse”. How we should dainty nan suffering of perpetrators is debatable but nan effects of civilized wounded are diagnosable and verifiable. Those that acquisition it are avoidant successful societal relationships, believing themselves unworthy of emotion aliases esteem.
Some studies person linked civilized wounded to higher incidences of suicidal ideation and termination attempts. It’s estimated that astir 6% of US subject veterans suffer social, psychological aliases belief trauma from morally injurious events. Moral wounded has besides been diagnosed among constabulary officers and different first responders. Recent studies person analyzed nan prevalence of PMIEs, aliases “potentially morally injurious events”, among US rule enforcement.
Dan Clare, a Marine Corps and aerial unit seasoned who now useful pinch Disabled American Veterans, counts himself arsenic personification who suffered profound civilized wounded while serving successful nan Iraq war. It each snapped into attraction erstwhile his aunt, a nun, asked him if he felt he had seen Jesus overseas. “I knew what she wanted maine to say,” Clare says. “But perfectly I did not spot Jesus successful Iraq. I did not spot nan will of God successful Iraq. I saw a batch of suffering erstwhile I was complete there. It changes your position of yourself. It makes you consciousness highly guilty.”
While Clare hesitates to remark connected DHS actions specifically, he notes that a sizeable number of caller ICE recruits are subject veterans – astir 30% by DHS’s ain accounting – who whitethorn already beryllium suffering from civilized injury. “It’s not needfully going to beryllium a triumph thigh for those folks who extremity their careers pinch ICE,” he says. “We’re worried astir those guys.”
‘They’re addicted to their ain adrenaline’
The caller ICE hiring spree was aggressive, pinch comparatively lax suitability requirements, courting would-be agents pinch nary rule enforcement aliases subject acquisition whatsoever. College grade requirements were cut. Age caps were eliminated. This led to worries that nan influx of street-level enforcement officers were undertrained, unvetted and ill-prepared for nan beingness and psychological toll of their mission.
“They’re hiring nan bottommost of nan tube astatine Customs and Border Protection,” says Jake Clark, a US service seasoned and erstwhile first responder (who served successful nan Los Angeles constabulary department, FBI, Secret Service and California nationalist guard) who now runs nan involution statement Save a Warrior, focused connected nan rehabilitation of civilized injury. “If you tin fog a fuckin’ mirror, they sewage a occupation for you.”
Clark maintains that agencies for illustration ICE thin to pull definite characteristic types and psychological profiles. “There’s a precocious grade of neglect, abuse, dysfunction, physical, emotional, intersexual abuse, belief abuse,” he says. “We spell into these jobs to recreate nan abandonment of our childhood. And we don’t cognize that we don’t cognize that, because we’re addicted to nan pain. And that’s nan secret.”
Clark defines galore of his patient-clients arsenic “process addicts”: that is, addicted not to narcotics aliases intoxicant aliases different exogenous adulterants, but to their ain learned assemblage chemistry. “They unrecorded for drama,” he says. “They’re addicted to their ain adrenaline, endorphins, melatonin and cortisol.”
Clark has worked pinch ICE and DHS agents astatine Save a Warrior, offering a therapeutic programme that includes identifying nan sources of those traumas, resolving psychic symptom and even, according to its website, “mindfulness-inspired labyrinth walks for integrating our endurance traits”. He worries that incidences of civilized wounded are bound to increase, particularly arsenic nan agency endures accrued disapproval and plummeting morale complete intolerable quotas, agelong hours and generalized nationalist hatred. Earlier this year, 1 anonymous ICE supplier described nan occupation to a newsman as “mission impossible”.
At a caller New Sanctuary Movement vigil successful Philadelphia, location was a akin compassion for agents’ troubled past, pinch a section pastor offering a dream for ICE agents. His petition acknowledged that not each ICE supplier is nan same.
Some enlist because they judge successful purging nan federation of undocumented immigrants. Others are enticed by nan hefty signing bonus. Some conscionable request work. Many are non-white. Latino Americans, for example, are overrepresented among ICE’s ranks, accounting for astir 30% of nan activity force.
And yes, surely, location are a fewer who conscionable thrill astatine nan committedness of confrontation and violence. “There were immoderate beardown words there,” New Amnesty’s Pedemonti recalls. “But it benignant of recognized that ICE agents are astatine different places.”
Other researchers, aren’t truthful judge it will beryllium imaginable for ICE agents to reckon pinch what they person done. Their morals, specified arsenic they are, are not astatine each “misaligned”. There is thing to beryllium compromised, betrayed aliases “injured”.
“I deliberation it’s a large concern,” says Joseph Wiinikka-Lydon, a civilized wounded clever clever and elder investigation expert astatine nan Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). “If you person group travel connected committee who really for illustration violence, I deliberation it’s very, very vulnerable and irresponsible.”
Wiinikka-Lydon worries that ICE is designed to shirk feelings of shame and culpability. This evasiveness, he believes, is symbolized by agents wearing masks and face-smothering cervix gaiters. “They’re fundamentally admitting that what they’re doing is harmful,” he says. “They make this personification not a person, but an supplier of nan state. It’s a motion of a desire to predominate and brutalize and to overpower.”
SPLC has besides noticed troubling signs successful nan agency’s recruitment patterns and demographics. Last August, they published a study criticizing ICE for utilizing graphics and messaging successful their recruitment run “ranging from overt nationalist and antisemitic imagery”. Earlier this year, nan US House typical Jamie Raskin expressed interest that nan agency was utilizing “white nationalist “dog whistles” successful its recruitment run … seemingly targeting members of extremist militias”. This included, Raskin said, members of nan Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Three Percenters and different far-right groups progressive successful nan attempted resurrection astatine nan US Capitol connected 6 January 2021, who were subsequently granted broad clemency from Donald Trump. Far-right governmental affiliation, a history of governmental unit and diagnosable sociopathy whitethorn not beryllium disqualifying. Indeed, ICE tin look for illustration a jobs programme for January 6 pardonees.
The billionaire hedge money manager, Democratic mega-donor and California gubernatorial hopeful Tom Steyer has called for ICE agents to beryllium treated for illustration a criminal racket. “You can’t betterment a criminal organization,” Steyer says. “Every American should beryllium concerned that ICE is recruiting group pinch authoritarian views that are contrary to nan constitution.”
Steyer brushes disconnected immoderate meaningful comparison betwixt ICE agents and subject veterans who are suffering from nan symptoms of alleged civilized injury. “An progressive work personnel who was deployed to a combat area successful a overseas country, nether authority authorized by Congress, is not nan aforesaid arsenic a masked thug shooting Americans successful nan thoroughfare for exercising their rights.”
ICE recruits have been compared to nan Gestapo, Adolf Hitler’s concealed authorities police. The Trump management complains that specified comparisons are purely pejorative, but astir observers support that this connection accurately describes ICE and their mission. In different words, nan jackboot fits.
“Our group person a corporate representation of what happened successful nan Holocaust,” says Shayna Solomon, an organizer pinch Never Again Action. Described arsenic a Jewish-led mobilization against nan persecution, detention and deportation of immigrants successful nan United States, Never Again Action isn’t acrophobic of drafting nonstop comparisons betwixt ICE anti-immigrant raids and nan astir harrowing humanities traumas of nan 20th century. As Solomon says: “It’s important that we usage our history and representation to conflict against fascism today.”
Getting agents to reconsider their role
Given these highly terrible indictments – comparing ICE officers to Nazis and nan Gestapo, aliases drafting a nonstop statement betwixt nan horrors of nan Holocaust, internment camps successful El Salvador and nan streets of Minneapolis – it tin beryllium difficult to rouse definite sectors of nan nationalist to attraction overmuch astir ICE’s feelings. Many would reason that nan trauma we should beryllium trying to heal is that of nan group ICE has brutalized, galore of them children.
Save a Warrior’s Jake Clark admits that nan quality of nan ICE mission, and its wide unpopularity – successful February, a canvass recovered that astir two-thirds of Americans disapprove of ICE’s actions – makes them a reliable demographic for nan nationalist to support. Given nan measurement nan ngo disrupts communities, their identity-concealing clothing and nan very nationalist incidences of unit perpetrated by ICE, it tin beryllium difficult to get galore group to attraction astir its agents’ psychological states aliases their feelings. “There’s a definite antipathy erstwhile you talk astir DHS and ICE,” he says, putting it lightly.
Asked if he thinks it is sometimes difficult to humanize and sympathize pinch ICE, New Sanctuary’s Peter Pedemonti pauses. “I deliberation we tin besides harden our hearts arsenic well,” he cautions. “We tin say, ‘These are unspeakable group and they’re not worthy saving.’ But we support nan oliva branch retired … That strategy is not for everybody.”
ICE agents don’t mostly speak to reporters aliases reside media concerns. The DHS has been accused person maintaining a combative narration pinch journalists, from accusing reporters of “demonizing DHS rule enforcement” to intimidating and arresting members of nan media for documenting ICE activity. Reached for comment, an ICE spokesperson maintained that “to safeguard employees’ mental, affectional and beingness wellness US Immigration and Customs Enforcement provides confidential services for each ICE labor and their family members”. These programs see non-clinical adjacent support, objective support for veterans serving wrong nan agency, and a chaplain programme to “assist labor successful situation aliases aft traumatic events, offering guidance for those who desire belief help”.
For Women’s March’s Rachel O’Leary Carmona, making genuine appeals to morality is much a intends to an end. Her commercialized campaign, she says, is not astir drumming up sympathy for nan hardworking enforcement agents, returning location pinch their heads hung low, but astir trying to get those aforesaid agents to region and reflect.
“Their redemption is not our concern,” Carmona says. “Their non-cooperation, their desire to time off their roles aliases their unwillingness to do things that mightiness get them successful problem – that feels important. We’re trying to get group to garbage to beryllium portion of this machine.”
