From the article, written by Nick Miroff, who was a reporter for the Washington Post until last March and is now at the Atlantic:

Most ICE officers and agents prefer to work in plain clothes, focus on finding immigrants who are known criminals, and keep a low profile, especially in major U.S. cities where they are loathed by many, and where some activists use crowdsourcing apps to report their whereabouts in real time. Driving around in “wrapped” vehicles not only blows their cover; it potentially makes them a target for protesters, vandals, and attackers, agency veterans told me.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her small cadre of loyal aides have been pushing the agency to do more showy operations in Democratic-run cities that can advance the president’s agenda—and supply clips for social media and the MAGA faithful. “They love this cowboy shit,” one frustrated ICE official told me.

Rather than pursue time-consuming hunts for “the worst of the worst,” officers are conducting roundups and setting up checkpoints to grab people from their vehicles. Trump officials now want everyone to know ICE is here. The publicity campaign, including the new vehicle design and social-media videos, has been pushed by DHS political appointees in their 20s who have been given positions of power at ICE, according to three agency officials I spoke with who requested anonymity to speak candidly.

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ICE aims to more than double the number of deportation officers on U.S. streets by the end of 2025. The slick cars and the bouncy rap tracks are recruitment tools, they say, along with a “Join ICE” website and an ad blitz using 1940s-style Army posters, many with Uncle Sam, to depict Trump’s deportation campaign as a patriotic war effort, akin to fighting the Nazis. Many of the new hires will enter ICE with different motivations than the generations before them, seeing the position not as a federal-law-enforcement career but as a chance to serve as a foot soldier in Trump’s mission to bring sweeping social and demographic change.

New deportation officers at ICE used to receive about five months of federal-law-enforcement training. Administration officials have cut that time roughly in half, partly by eliminating Spanish-language courses. Academy training was shortened to 47 days, three officials told me, the number picked because Trump is the 47th president. DHS officials said the training will run six days a week for eight weeks.

Trump took office promising millions of deportations a year, a goal so unrealistic that it has doomed career officials at ICE to a perpetual state of missing expectations and constant worry about getting fired. Miller, who specializes in making federal policy out of Trump hyperbole, has tried setting quotas, telling ICE to make 3,000 immigration arrests a day. The agency continues to come up short. Noem has reshuffled ICE’s top leaders and forced out others, criticizing them for not delivering what the president wants.

It’s not for lack of effort. ICE arrests in U.S. cities and communities have jumped fourfold under Trump, the latest government data show. More than 59,000 detainees are in custody across the country and facing deportation, a record, and Trump’s funding bill has given ICE $45 billion to expand detention capacity to more than 100,000 beds. The agency is on track for about 300,000 deportations during the 2025 fiscal year, which ends next month. That would be the highest level in at least a decade.

The new hiring push is preparing ICE for the next phase of Trump’s deportations, targeting major U.S. cities that have “sanctuary” policies that limit cooperation between police and federal immigration authorities. Trump officials have targeted some of those cities—especially Los Angeles, and now Washington, D.C.—but ICE still doesn’t have the staffing to carry out the kind of roundups Miller has been pushing for.

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Sheahan, whose job consists of running ICE’s “day-to-day operations,” according to her official bio, has alienated many career officials who dislike being bossed around by a 28-year-old who has never worked in immigration enforcement. Eight current and former officials told me that Sheahan affects a brusque, bruising personal manner that they believe she deploys to compensate for her lack of law-enforcement credentials.

“They put her in there because she has a very, very close connection to the secretary, to be her eyes and ears and keep watch on what’s going on,” one official told me. “She’s been demanding a gun and a badge constantly, even though she’s never gone through any training or done anything to earn those things.”

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Several of the current and former officials I spoke with are conservative lifelong cops who believe deeply in immigration enforcement and the role of ICE. They told me they worry that a historic chance to reform the agency will be squandered by incompetence and shady deals with well-connected contractors.

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Current and former ICE officials I’ve known for years told me they have little confidence that the hiring surge will be carried out responsibly and raise the professionalism of the agency workforce. “They’re opening it up to everyone who wants to get a badge and a gun,” one veteran official told me.

“We have had enough problems trying to clean up the workforce to make us a really viable law-enforcement organization and get a smarter, stronger, more mature workforce that isn’t gonna make mistakes on the street,” the official said. “And now? You’re gonna get a lot of people who are just power hungry and want authority.”