The commercials are meant to speak “directly to ICE agents who may be grappling with guilt, burnout, or moral conflict over their work” – providing a counterpoint to ICE recruitment commercials and to commercials where Noem advises migrants to self-deport.
The video’s on YouTube, and it’s not as “fellow kids” as I’d expected.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=684ncxqERO4
However, it’s mistaken. A mask can hide them. They don’t come home wearing the battle rattle, they change into their work clothes at work.
IMO, a better approach would be to show the father on his day off, out with his child, witnessing other ICE agents. They’re at the park, the ice cream vendor is arrested after they’d purchased ice cream. They’re at a classmate’s birthday party, the birthday boy’s parents are arrested. The frightened child asks the father why, he struggles to explain it, while having a flashback to his workdays.
I feel like I would empathize with the situation you describe, but I’m so cynical, I just imagine the father telling the frightened child that the friendly ice cream man was hiding a terrible secret - that he is a criminal and was here illegally; that he is taking jobs from people who need the work, and will then use the nearest white homeless person as an example of the type of person who could be working, in clean clothes, and not struggling on the streets if only we facilitate this vision of a white Christian ethno-state.
And while that narrative is complete and utter nonsense, it is a common one, and it’s one that impressionable children believe and adopt as a core part of their worldview. Many never recover from that intellectual poisoning.
Sure, but it’s their commercial, they don’t need to have their actor say “That taco bender raped 14 white women.” or whatever.
They don’t need to change an ICE agent’s entire worldview. Nor are they likely to, if it’s an ardent white/christian nationalist, a MAGA fascist. The target audience would be the ones that are ordinary law and order authoritarians. Getting them to think “I can’t justify arresting the good ones.” is sufficient.
I like your idea even better.