One of our favorite running subplots of the first year of the Trump administration is that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is struggling to recruit new agents who possess an IQ above 50 and the ability to walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded. You laugh, but it’s hard to carry off Stephen Miller’s vast deportation wet dreams when the ICE officers are mostly chasing Honduran nannies who can fool them by pointing at something behind the agents, yelling “Look over there!” and then running off in the other direction.
And yet, ICE keeps plugging along, hoping against hope that it can find some agents who aren’t single-celled reprobates who got fired from a bunch of college campus police forces for roofieing coeds.
The Washington Post got its hands on the 30-page document outlining what ICE calls a “wartime recruitment” strategy and the rest of us might call “a pathetic excuse for a job program for the otherwise unemployable.” To wit:
The spending would help President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda dominate media networks and recruitment channels, including through ads targeting people who have attended UFC fights, listened to patriotic podcasts, or shown an interest in guns and tactical gear[.]
Fantastic. What the nation needs is more of Joe Rogan’s audience armed and carrying badges.
It gets worse somehow:
Under the strategy, ICE would also use an ad-industry technique known as “geofencing” to send ads to the phone web browsers and social media feeds of anyone who set foot near military bases, NASCAR races, college campuses, or gun and trade shows.
We live within 15 miles of multiple military bases and three college campuses. Can’t wait for the targeted ICE recruitment ads to start flooding our phone. It’s good money for the marketers. The Post reports that two marketing firms scored $40 million worth of contracts to support the “recruitment campaign.” These days, the chances principals at those firms have some sort of personal tie to the Trump family are probably about 1 in 3.
This report comes at the end of a year that has seen ICE absolutely debase itself — more than it was already — to try and bring in enough recruits that they can throw into the field as fast as possible. To that end, the agency has cut requirements deeply.
Age restrictions were relaxed. The training time at a federal law enforcement training academy in Georgia was cut in half, from four months to two. The timing of fitness tests for recruits has been moved up because so many were failing it that the trainers decided they should weed them out sooner so they wouldn’t waste time.
And this is not what we would consider an overly strenuous fitness test. The whole thing consists of running 1.5 miles, doing 15 pushups and 32 sit-ups in 14 minutes. We’re just a middle-aged yutz who has spent most of his adult life sitting down, but we’re pretty sure we could do those first two in close to 14 minutes. In fairness, if we also must do the sit-ups, we’ll probably die.
The physical deficiencies of these recruits makes it even more hilarious that ICE is pushing such a martial mindset for the demanding job of walking into an immigration court and arresting everyone with skin tones darker than ecru. We already mentioned that ICE refers to this effort as “wartime recruitment.” There are ads showing Uncle Sam pointing and saying “America Needs You” like it’s 1942 and World War II is really kicking into gear. There is a lot of talk about enemies being at the gates and needing to “cowboy up” and start deporting.
There are even the ads that call back to World War I posters:
Subtle! No one tell them how much foreign help George Washington had to fund and fight the Revolutionary War, they’ll probably outlaw historians and deport Ken Burns.
[WaPo]
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