The mega-viral ICE videos that explain America right now |
The videos seem to be everywhere. From a Chicago suburb, cellphone footage of federal agents firing pepper balls at a pastor and tear-gassing a mayor and a congressional candidate. Across the city, slick footage of a military-style raid on an apartment complex. From New York, a barrage of photos and videos of civilians being slammed to the floor or restrained in immigration courts.
These clips spread widely on social media. You’ve probably seen at least a handful of them on TikTok, X, or BlueSky. Taken altogether, they provide a panorama of federal agents — usually from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and US Border Patrol — using force and aggression to control crowds, disperse protesters, and seize immigrants.
But the proliferation of viral videos shows something else, too: namely, how Red and Blue America use these attention-grabbing videos to construct two mutually contradictory realities. In one of these realities, the natural response to these examples of state violence is assumed to be defined by a sense of outrage, disgust, and fear.
In the other reality, however, these videos are a source of glee, curiosity, and satisfaction. To viewers who support ICE’s actions, such videos are regarded as appropriate reactions to hostile crowds harassing law enforcement officers as they try to enforce existing immigration law. The common refrain from these quarters is a variation on: “I voted for this.”
“There are so many different viral moments now, which also affect different American cities and very different populations, that this is becoming a lot more widespread. Even if people aren’t exposed to it online, they’re very likely exposed to it in news coverage of it after the fact,” Emerson T. Brooking, the director of strategy at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, told me. “Certainly, some people in the Trump administration aren’t concerned about the virality of these clips — that’s why you’re seeing the use of so much in taxpayer money to try to advance a pro-ICE agenda [online].”
But these videos aren’t just spreading across social media; they’re also breaking into traditional and mainstream media, becoming one of the primary ways that different parts of the American public are seeing, processing, and forming opinions about the second Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign. The result, experts say, is a process in........