LOS ANGELES, Aug 8 — From Uncle Sam to Superman, the US government is deploying patriotic icons and increasingly warlike rhetoric to recruit Americans into enforcing Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Job ads promising US$50,000 (RM211,780) signing bonuses to new “Deportation Officers” have flooded social media over the past week, accompanied by jingoistic rallying slogans that declare “America Needs You.”
White House officials have shared World War I-style posters, including one with Uncle Sam donning an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) baseball cap, while a former Superman actor has pledged he will “be sworn in as an ICE agent ASAP.”
“So many patriots have stepped up, and I’m proud to be among them,” Dean Cain, who starred as the Man of Steel in 1990s TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, told FOX News.
ICE, the agency chiefly responsible for the recent, divisive masked raids on farms, factories and Home Depot parking lots across the nation, is pulling out all the stops to hire new officers at a staggering rate.
Flush with US$75 billion in extra funding — making it the highest-funded US law enforcement agency, ahead of even the FBI — ICE has been tasked by Trump with deporting one million undocumented immigrants per year.
To do so, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has pledged to hire 10,000 new officers, in a process that would swell ICE’s ranks by a whopping 50 per cent.
On Wednesday, Noem scrapped pre-existing age caps that prevented over-40s from becoming deportation officers.
Student debt forgiveness, generous overtime pay and enhanced retirement benefits are all being flouted — alongside language about the opportunity to “Fulfill your destiny” and “Defend the Homeland.”
“Your nation needs you to step into the breach. For our country, for our culture, for our way of life. Will you answer the call?” read one post on Department of Homeland Security social media accounts.
‘All-hands-on-deck’
DHS officials say they have received 80,000 applications since the recruitment campaign began less than a week ago.
But critics have quickly highlighted evidence that the aggressive drive may not be working as effectively as officials claim.
Dozens of officials at FEMA — a separate agency that deals with emergency disaster response — have been reassigned to ICE and threatened with losing their jobs if they do not move, the Washington Post reported.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the Post the move was part of “an all-hands-on-deck strategy to recruit 10,000 new ICE agents.”
An ICE pilot programme offering agents additional cash bonuses for deporting people quickly was scrapped less than four hours after it was announced, when its existence was leaked to the New York Times.
And some local law enforcement agencies that have cooperated with the federal immigration crackdown have complained that they are now seeing their own officers poached.
“ICE actively trying to use our partnership to recruit our personnel is wrong,” a Florida sheriff’s office spokesperson told CNN.
‘Kryptonite’
Perhaps the highest profile and most scathing response has come from South Park, the popular animated TV satire that is becoming a thorn in the Trump administration’s side.
In a recent episode, hapless school counsellor Mr Mackey is offered an ICE job after a seven-second-long interview, immediately handed a gun and sent on a raid of a children’s concert.
“If you’re crazy, or fat and lazy, we don’t care at all,” says a fictional ICE job advert.
“Remember, only detain the brown ones. If it’s brown, it goes down,” orders Noem’s character during a satirical sequence set during an immigration raid in heaven.
ICE raids have been accused using racial profiling by rights groups.
Meanwhile, the recruitment drive has been hailed by conservative outlets.
Fox News celebrated the news that Superman actor Cain had enlisted with the headline banner “Illegals, meet your Kryptonite.”
Supportive comments on the channel’s Facebook page included “Now that’s a REAL Superman.”
Several others pointed out that Superman, a beloved comic book hero who is closely associated with American patriotism, is “quite literally an alien immigrant.” — AFP
Uncle Sam, Superman and war cries: US pulls out all stops to hire deportation officers
