Nearly two months into President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign, social media feeds from his administration and its right-wing allies paint a grim picture of Chicago: a city plagued by violent criminals that is at war with the federal government.
Made-for-Hollywood videos depict heroic military-style raids. “Criminal illegal aliens” are chased down and handcuffed. An immigration facility is shown bracing for attacks by “agitators” and “terrorists.”
Altogether, the media blitz aims to build public support for these enforcement efforts.
Yet the government’s storytelling doesn’t always match what’s happening in communities across the nation’s third-largest city and its suburbs. Nick Cull, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, calls it government “propaganda.”
“By propaganda, what I mean is mass political persuasion,” says Cull, who co-edited the book “Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500-present.”
The Trump administration uses particular elements of propaganda to build its case that the enforcement is needed, Cull and other experts say.
Military imagery projects government strength in the face of Chicago’s dangers. Hyperbolic language describes unremarkable protests. Strong leaders like Gregory Bovino, commander-at-large of the U.S. Border Patrol, are propped up as the face of the campaign. Memes and references to pop culture tap into a younger audience. And social media influencers are deputized to spread the message.
This all coincides with a campaign to recruit more immigration agents that appeals to American nostalgia and patriotism while vilifying immigrants. One U.S. Department of Homeland Security ad with shadowy figures holding swords in a cloud of fog calls on Americans to “defend your hearth and home” because “the enemies are at the gates.” Another features a Coca-Cola bottle on a classic red Ford Bronco and says “America is worth fighting for.”
Cull says propaganda targets “people’s fears [and] darkest thoughts” and affirms them — in this case about immigration. But the techniques can also sway people who are on the fence.
“They are filming these raids and then making these sizzle reels of apprehensions and grappling and long guns that are very exciting for young people to see and to feel a sense of duty and purpose as a result,” says Boston University assistant professor Joan Donovan, co-author of the book “Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America.”
Cull says the diverging sources of information are creating “parallel universes.”
“There’s a battle in Chicago for one part of the American population,” he says, “and there’s just police and paramilitaries bullying people for another part of the population.”
With help from Cull, Donovan and a former senior DHS official, the Chicago Sun-Times analyzed five examples of these “propaganda” videos and the techniques they rely on to convey the government’s narrative.
Hollywood-style heroes ‘neutralize’ the danger
It starts with the sound of helicopter blades whirring in the night sky and flashlights shining on an apartment building.
Then the action music kicks in.
Men in military-style clothing hold large weapons and look ready to storm the complex. Agents climb ladders to get inside. They smash down apartment doors. They come back out with Latino men whose wrists are zip tied behind their backs.
Residents described this Sept. 30 raid of a South Shore neighborhood apartment building — conducted in the middle of the night — as terrifying. Witnesses said flash grenades went off in the hallways, and men, women and children were pulled from their apartments, some of them naked. A neighbor hid a screaming 7-year-old girl and her mother. U.S. citizens were zip tied for hours.
The highly produced video published by DHS shows heroism — not any of those details.
“There’s movie-type music, there’s zooming in, you’re moving through a rapid-edited action sequence,” Cull says. “It’s like outtakes from a motion picture. High quality. Those are the ones where you see the people who have been rounded up. So the idea that something heroic is taking place, somebody dangerous has been neutralized.
“It’s striking and resonating with longstanding elements in American popular culture,” he says. “Like the sort of saddling-up scenes, when American cops or the military are getting ready for a mission.”
Donovan says editing out the “tears and screams of the children and families” helps DHS meet its goal of “normalizing” the militaristic activity for the American public.
And how does DHS make a video like the one from South Shore?
Security footage from a nearby elementary school gives an answer. Obtained by the Sun-Times through a public records request, it shows a camera crew of at least nine people wearing street clothing filming the entire raid, some with neon Department of Homeland Security Office of Public Affairs vests.
Surveillance footage obtained by the Sun-Times through a public records request from a nearby school shows a team of Homeland Security photographers capturing footage of the South Shore raid that later would be used in highly produced videos.
Chicago Public Schools; annotation by Justin Myers/Sun-Times
Gil Kerlikowske, a former commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees Border Patrol, says DHS “can’t burn barrels of cash fast enough” after it got a funding infusion from Congress this year.
“It’s abhorrent to me to see the taxpayer dollar being used in this way, in propaganda and show,” he says.
Military imagery projects government strength
The feds have publicized one other high-intensity nighttime raid in the Chicago area. It took place in suburban Elgin a few weeks prior.
The video DHS posted of the raid starts with dimly lit scenes and lyrics from a cover of the Nirvana song “Smells Like Teen Spirit”: “Load up on guns, bring your friends.”
Agents led by Bovino and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem drive in front of the Chicago skyline and pass Trump Tower— some of them hanging off the backs of trucks — as they prepare for a seemingly major military mission.
The video cuts to an overhead view of the target house from a helicopter — some 40 miles away from downtown Chicago — before there’s a sudden explosion as the house’s front door is blown open.
Electronic music fades in, and men are brought out of the house under arrest.
“There’s no operational need for any of these techniques,” Kerlikowske says of the firepower. “This is all about showboating.”
Cull says the video is “implying the strength and capability of ICE and associating those operations with the iconography of the American military and American military capability,” which he describes as the “fetishization of the military.”
The military target is “designed not to be recognizable,” he says, so the Trump administration can sell the raid as an advertisement of “making America safe again” that can be repeated in any American city. The video doesn’t show that two U.S. citizens were among those detained.
Donovan says DHS intentionally uses “contentious messaging” to anger people who oppose the deportation efforts while entertaining those in support.
“Things don’t tend to trend or reach new audiences if they don’t upset one large part of a group while also making another group laugh,” she says.
An internet personality says ‘terrorists’ are attacking ICE
“What’s up guys! Today, we’re going on an ICE raid with Sec. Kristi Noem through Chicago,” right-wing internet personality Benny Johnson says to start his 12-minute, 41-second highlight reel. He has more than 12 million total followers on X, Instagram and YouTube.
“It’s going to be an absolutely wild day,” he continues. “Come along with us as we show you what a day in the life of an ICE agent inside one of America’s most Democrat, left-wing cities is actually like.”
Johnson, who lives in Tampa Bay, Fla., starts the day at Trump Tower with Noem, who gives him a hug.
At one point Johnson dons a Border Patrol vest during a raid outside a Walmart. But much of the video takes place in west suburban Broadview, home to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, which Johnson calls the “No. 1 most-attacked ICE facility in America.”
DHS has claimed the daily protests outside the Broadview facility have been violent, classifying them as riots. A federal judge has been skeptical, ordering the feds to limit their use of force.
Johnson calls the protesters “agitators” and a “terrorist element” as he shows a few who have been detained. He doesn’t interview protesters at any point.
Cull says it’s jarring to see a social media influencer talking about “being with ICE as they face down dangerous terrorists,” when in the video “you just see a rather unimpressive line of protesters with cardboard signs.”
“To dignify them with the vocabulary you use to describe the seasoned killers of ISIS is just absurd,” he says.
“It’s all anticipation and mood and atmosphere,” Cull says, pointing out that the video never shows the action that Johnson describes. “I wasn’t seeing great acts of bravery, I wasn’t watching something that would live on in the archives as an amazing moment of justice or heroism or anything really. … And by the end, I wanted to fast forward just to see, ‘Oh come on, at what point does something actually happen in this video.’”
Yet the propaganda technique works.
“You go straight to the comments and you see how people are being affirmed by this,” Culls says. “They have comments on those videos like, ‘God bless ICE. Thank you for what you’re doing.’”
A trusted voice is given special access to share ICE’s perspective
Right-wing social media personality Ben Bergquam sits in a vehicle with ICE officers, listening to their perspective as they describe their mission and the people with criminal records who they’re targeting.
The ridealong gives the audience a rare behind-the-scenes look at deportation efforts through the point of view of federal agents — whose faces Bergquam’s video blurs.
Cull says this type of access successfully gets the government’s message out through an internet personality who an audience identifies with and trusts.
“DHS is able to borrow credibility,” Cull says.
But who exactly is the source, and how do they influence the content?
In Bergquam’s case, his show has peddled the great replacement theory, which falsely states that Democrats promote pro-immigration policies to dilute the white population. Bergquam often appears alongside Trump adviser and far-right leader Steve Bannon.
Bergquam has almost 200,000 followers on Instagram — a number that has grown during the feds’ two months in Chicago. He contributes to the right-wing news channel Real America’s Voice.
Main characters Bovino and Noem play the role of strong leaders
As he leaves a hearing with a federal judge in late October, Bovino hangs out of a DHS vehicle outside the courthouse and gives military hand signals to his agents.
With a popular social media song playing, the video cuts to glamor shots of Bovino in the field and posed photos. The DHS post says Bovino is “putting his life on the line to protect our citizens, and no amount of radical terror or anarchy will stop us in our mission.”
Cull says this propping up of key leaders turns into cosplay in which Bovino and Noem are main characters.
“The way that Kristi Noem has stylized herself over and over, you can get the feeling in some instances that you’re watching a movie,” Donovan says, adding that Bovino is “explicitly playing the role of GI Joe.”
“His image is very iconic,” Donovan says. “The way he dresses, the sharpness of the hand signals that may or may not mean something. All of those things fit the stereotype.”
Bovino has become an identifiable personality in recent months. He’s been the only federal agent with his name on his uniform in an enforcement campaign that has seen a federal judge crack down on unidentifiable agents. DHS has posted videos of him laughing and shaking hands with customers in a convenience store.
He and Noem have posed for photos and videos on the rooftops of buildings, in front of protesters and on the Chicago River. Noem arrived in Chicago for the Elgin raid and left hours later.
“In an authoritarian system, you have identifiable leaders, and the leaders have answers,” Cull says. “So orienting towards leaders is one of the principles of this kind of politics.
“It’s a playbook that, to be 100% honest, I recognize from looking at Roman emperors rather than American presidents.”