In recent weeks, the Trump administration has fully embraced the art of the immigration raid as reality television. They are intentionally producing devastating scenes designed to circulate on social media. But beyond offering viewers a chance to participate in the administration’s cruelty, this content creation serves a strategic purpose. Why are Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and “border czar” Tom Homan showing up personally for raids, cameras and influencers in tow? Because the Trump administration currently does not have enough agents to round people up or camps to put them in. (ICE is currently looking for new contractors, with plans to spend an additional $45 billion over the next two years on immigrant detention.) But if Noem and Homan appear in person for these raids—if they become news events, if they generate posts—they can terrorize many more thousands of people than they can deport. This mass-deportation machine relies upon propaganda, chaos, and fear to accomplish what they cannot with the laws, enforcement officers, and infrastructure they have at their disposal.
This might also explain why, when the team touched down in Arizona earlier this week, Noem was accompanied by the far-right extremist content creator Chaya Raichik, the architect of the influential X account Libs of TikTok. The Trump administration is branding traumatic arrests and detentions as some depraved cross-over event between law enforcement and internet vigilantes. It as if all the people behind those viral posts claiming people are being “trafficked” in the parking lot at Target are now in charge of ICE communications, or running the agency. However chaotic and ill-advised, deputizing the far-right conspiracy machine like this also greatly extends the Trump administration’s reach.
Noem may not have originated this strategy—ICE has long made self-produced photos and videos available to the media, claiming to show what goes on inside arrests or raids. But Noem brings it fully into the far-right “meme factory” era, into which this administration gleefully crossed when the White House posted its version of an ASMR video—typically filled with sounds that soothe the viewer—of people being cuffed, chained, and forced onto a removal flight in February, as if the sounds of metal-on-metal-on-human are just another variation on the satisfying smack of products being decanted in perfect kitchens. Its apotheosis-so-far would be the video made late in March inside the prison in El Salvador where the United States unlawfully banished nearly 300 immigrants. Noem was placed in front of a cell crowded floor to ceiling with bunks of men, heads shaved, with another row lined up and shirtless directly behind her. She’s in full but modified glam: Her hair is blown out and perfectly waved and highlighted under her DHS ball cap, and her body-skimming athleisure is accessorized with a $50,000 Rolex gleaming on her wrist.
As Jeff Sharlet has argued, Noem’s performances in these videos “dare us to name their intention: the sadistic eroticization of power.” But she could also be the thumbnail teaser for a “Run weekend errands with me!” video. Or a human haul video, displaying incarcerated people instead of the fruits of a wild shopping spree: Noem barely refers directly to the men behind her, just thanks the president of El Salvador for caging people she calls “our terrorists.” The end result was a proud, highly staged documentation of rights violations; the video may itself be one.
It goes without saying that these videos are dehumanizing. They are meant to stigmatize the people in them through insinuation and set-dressing, to reduce their whole selves to a blunt weapon the administration can use against even more people. One of the men was identified by his wife, when he was in another video, being made to kneel down, a guard’s hand bowing his head. He’s a member of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers, or SMART, which condemned his treatment by the United States. “We’re the backbone of America,” said Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, on Wednesday. “And yeah, that means all of us—including our brother, SMART apprentice Kilmar Armando Abrego-Garcia, who we demand be returned to us and his family.”
Noem has gone right on making this content out of suffering. When Chaya Raichik rolled out with her this week in Arizona, it was as if she acquired a sidekick in a cop comedy. A nervous Raichik spoke direct to camera while in front of a small group of people in protective gear, ball caps, and sunglasses, standing around a militarized vehicle marked Special Response Team. “Hi, everyone,” she began. “I’m in Phoenix, Arizona, with DHS Secretary Noem and the incredible ICE and DHS team, and we are about to go arrest a criminal illegal alien.” As proof, she posted a photo of a man apparently restrained in a vehicle, guarded by someone with an “ICE Special Response Unit” patch on his shoulder. In a video of the scene posted a bit later, Raichik focused on Noem speaking to the man, who she said tried to block them (and their cameras) with his foot: “This illegal was so mad he was getting arrested so he tried blocking us and hiding with his CROC,” she posted. Leaning into the large vehicle where he sat, her own face blocked by her long brown hair and a too-big protective vest, Noem taunted the man, as Raichik quoted in her caption, “DHS Secretary Noem: ‘You’re not scaring me with your crocs’ 😂😂😂” This was a New York Post headline later. The Arizona Republic put “Libs of TikTok” in their headline on the arrests.
Noem appeared coiffed with a ball cap as before, but this time in black tactical-ish gear, in one video carrying a rifle. “We’re going out to pick up somebody who I think has charges for human trafficking,” Noem said in a post to her “@Sec_Noem” X account. Her follow-up post with arrest photos offered no elaboration. Raichik could be seen in her own content dressed modestly, in a long block dress or skirt, but topped by a tactical vest with ICE insignia.
The mocking, almost celebratory tone (and emoji) from Raichik is a signature, honed on years of targeted harassment of trans and queer people online, Pride and drag events, teachers and librarians who were LGBTQ-affirming, and providers and clinics who served young trans people. When USA Today reported on her harassment campaigns, Raichik posted a photo of herself holding up the front page: “When Libs of TikTok tweets, threats increasingly follow.” Borrowing from anti-gay activist and former orange juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant, Raichik has characterized herself as merely trying to protect children from “groomers,” a word she helped popularize into a slur widely used on the right. Her content has always been part policing and part propaganda, but this is the first time she’s been used in this way: to ride along for a round-up, a kind of audience proxy that Trump’s audience knows all too well.
Noem knows what she’s doing; her presence blended high femme and fetishized violence. Bringing in Raichik adds something mean and almost maternal to Noem’s cold affect. There will be women watching, and wanting to join them, as some vigilantes already have, posing as ICE to harass immigrants and people they profile as immigrants.
The Trump administration’s targets are also starting to use video—for a very different purpose. When men in “POLICE” tactical vests surrounded their car on March 31 as 18-year-old Karen Cruz Berrios was on the way to work with her mom, Elsy, Karen grabbed her phone and aimed it at them. The men ordered her mother out of the car. It was just days after Noem’s promotional visit to the prison in El Salvador, where Kilmar Armando Abrego-Garcia was illegally held (and is still being held), after he had been snatched in Maryland. Karen asked to see the order the men claimed they had, but the men refused. One of the men, who was masked, then smashed the driver’s side window and took her mother. “You guys cannot take her just because you want to,” Karen cried. Her video was an act of defense and care. Her mother remains in ICE detention as of this publication, with a bond hearing set for April 14.
