ICE TV

Social media is flooded with videos of immigration raids. They tell a different story depending on where you're looking.

- Kathryn VanArendonk

EARLY IN JUNE, after anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles had swelled in size and fury, the Department of Homeland Security posted a video of an immigration raid in El Monte, California. Over a generic hip-hop beat, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Response Team serves a warrant to arrest a bald man wearing a black sweatshirt who walks out of a residential home with his hands up. The man, described in the Instagram as a “Mexican illegal alien,” is handcuffed on the side of a hulking black armored military vehicle. Slow-motion footage pans across close-ups of split-second associative images: red and blue lights flashing on a huge tactical vehicle, officers in helmets and gear striding forward, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posing on the sidelines wearing a tactical vest with a POLICE ICE label, her arm draped casually, relaxed but wary, over the hood of an SUV.