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.
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.