Caitlin Dickerson

But the fact is that if you're a member of the Proud Boys or you're a follower of QAnon, you recognize these exact phrases that are being used as a kind of call to action and to apply for a job as an ICE agent.

I make of that that Miller's trying to communicate to ICE and to these new members of ICE in particular that they will not face consequences for use of force specifically.

I think he's speaking to the ICE officer who shot Renee Good in Minnesota last week and killed her, but also to officers who've used tear gas, who've pushed and shoved and arrested protesters, who've claimed that people who are filming them are...

impeding arrests and using that as a pretense to either take those people into custody or have some sort of violent altercation with them.

It's very striking.

I was talking to one former ICE official who told me that, you know, you would always fear discharging your weapon in an interaction, even a

potentially violent and a dangerous one, usually the concern was that officers would be too unwilling to use their gun because they worried about potential repercussions.

And there were all these layers of investigation that would take place after a shooting.

And so...

his fear when he was in ICE for 30 years was that he wouldn't use his gun in a moment when he needed to.

And now it's almost as if the opposite fear is true.

And we've seen within ICE people losing their jobs

high-level officials losing their jobs because they're not delivering enough deportations, they're not being aggressive enough.

And so I think Miller is just underscoring that argument that you're not going to get in trouble for being too aggressive.

And in fact, the only thing you will get in trouble for is not being aggressive enough.

So it's happened a couple of different times.

The very head of ICE was replaced.

A deputy was replaced.

And then we've also seen several field office directors.

So ICE has the country divided into individual field offices.