The Washington Post reports:

For the Immigration and Customs Enforcement public affairs team, the nighttime operation across metro Houston in October was a gold mine.

An ICE video producer shadowed agents as they pulled over and handcuffed more than 120 suspected undocumented immigrants, then sent the footage to a private team chatroom.

Across thousands of internal ICE messages reviewed by The Washington Post, this kind of celebration has become commonplace. The messages show how the team has worked closely with the White House, which has urged them to produce videos for social media of immigrant arrests and confrontations to portray its push for mass deportation as critical to protecting the American way of life.

Before officials could post the Houston video, they had to figure out how to frame it. Officials did not know if all the arrestees had criminal records, they wrote in the chats, undermining a slogan the team had worked to promote on social media: that ICE targeted the “Worst of the Worst.”

After some discussion, the team decided on a compromise.

Instead of arguing they’d snared hardened criminals, officials wrote a caption saying the arrests showed the dangers of “illegal aliens … behind the wheel.”

Then, to maximize the video’s chances of going viral, they needed a soundtrack.

They settled on a rap song by Nbhd Nick, which his label would later tell The Post was used without permission, that starts, “Oh, you thought this was a game, huh?”

The video was posted to ICE’s social media channels, where it has been viewed more than 1 million times in total. [Continue reading…]