Two Fresno men are of accused of carrying out a social media stunt where they posed as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and filmed themselves harassing local businesses, weeks after actual ICE raids in the Central Valley put the region’s undocumented community on edge.
The pair donned wigs and black tactical vests with letters deliberately covered up so they read “Police” and “ICE,” and were reported confronting community members at 11 businesses, according to the Fresno Police Department. At one store, they told employees they were conducting an investigation and demanded to see specific business documents, police said.
Two men who police said harassed Fresno businesses wore black vests with some of the letters covered.
(Fresno Police Department)
Police arrested the men Wednesday on suspicion of impersonating a police officer, a misdemeanor. They were cited and later released.
“As their actions were done simply to gain attention on their personal social media pages, we will not be releasing their names or other information,” the department stated.
The department learned about the social media stunt Wednesday morning when it began receiving numerous calls complaining of harassment. Officers then located the suspects wearing fake vests outside of a business in the River Park shopping center.
The men’s fake interrogations come on the heels of several recent ICE operations in California, following President Trump’s vow to carry out the largest deportation effort in U.S. history.
In January, ICE officers conducted a three-day raid in rural areas of Kern County, resulting in the detention and deportation of scores of undocumented farmworkers. Undercover ICE operations have also been recently reported in Madera and San Jose.
The Fresno impersonators’ social media stunt comes two weeks after apparent YouTube pranksters pulled off a fake raid of their own at San Francisco City Hall by pretending to be Department of Government Efficiency workers. On Feb. 14, the men roamed the building in DOGE T-shirts, telling workers they would audit their computer systems, asking for sensitive data and calling one employee’s work “lists of stupid s—.”
Comedian Danny Mullen posted a video of the encounters on YouTube. The San Francisco Police Department is investigating the incident to determine whether the impersonators violated any laws.
Last June, the Anaheim Police Department arrested two men on suspicion of impersonating ICE agents for a much more sinister purpose — to rob Latino residents.
The two ICE impersonators spoke to residents in Spanish, showed fake badges and then proceeded to coerce money out of them before taking off in a car, according to victims’ testimony.
At the time, Anaheim Sgt. Jon McClintock said he was aware of at least five identical thefts that happened in Anaheim and more across Orange County.
In 2018, a Santa Ana man was sentenced to eight months in prison after dressing up as an ICE official to extort a woman of $5,000 under the threat of deportation.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
