Image: A federal immigration agent directs observers after they arrested people at a residence on January 13, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Congressman Jamie Raskin got right to the point in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as he sought an answer to a question several Democratic lawmakers have raised in recent months regarding the Trump administration’s recruiting practices as it seeks to flood American communities with immigration officers.

“How many pardoned January 6th insurrectionists have been hired by your respective departments?” Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, asked the two officials.

The congressman wrote to Bondi and Noem as video evidence continues to mount of federal agents’ violent tactics in communities across the US following an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent’s fatal shooting of Minneapolis resident Renee Good last week.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said Raskin, “seems to be courting pardoned January 6th insurrectionists.”

He pointed to “white nationalist ‘dog whistles’” it’s used in its recruitment campaigns that appear to target members of “extremist militias” like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters.

Potential ICE recruits have been bombarded by messages from DHS calling on them to help “defend the homeland” and images like one of a white Uncle Sam caricature standing at a crossroads with signs pointing one way—labeled “INVASION” and “CULTURAL DECLINE”—and another, labeled “HOMELAND” and “LAW AND ORDER.” The image and caption appeared to be a reference to the white nationalist text Which Way, Western Man? by William Gayley Simpson.

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