A woman in a now-trending Instagram video posted by photographer Ricardo Miranda (@ricardosalvadormiranda) is drawing fresh scrutiny to President Trump’s intense immigration policy and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
This is after The New York Times reported the agency briefly offered cash bonuses to agents for deporting people faster, then rescinded the plan within hours.
In the clip, the well-spoken woman likens the quickly withdrawn incentive to a “payday scam,” telling viewers, “ICE promised y’all $50,000 and now they ghosted you,” before mocking the scheme as “the Trump University of payday scams.”
Her rant—equal parts satire and scorn—accuses officials of using would-be participants as “props” for tough-on-immigration talking points and photo ops.
What the Times Reported Happened
According to The New York Times, ICE sent an internal email last week announcing a 30-day pilot offering per-deportation cash bonuses to speed removals: $200 for deportations within seven days of arrest and $100 for deportations within two weeks. The memo signed by Liana J. Castaño in ICE’s field operations division told agents to use expedited removal (which allows deportation without court proceedings) and to consider voluntary departure to “maximize” payouts.
Less than four hours after that email went out, ICE issued a terse follow-up: “PLEASE DISREGARD.” A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin, said the pilot had not been authorized by agency leadership and that “no such policy is in effect or has ever been in effect.” The cancellation email was sent shortly after the Times asked the agency about the plan.
The quickly scrapped pilot unfolded amid an aggressive buildup of immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump. As the Times detailed, the administration has:
- Promoted signing/retention bonuses up to $50,000 and vowed to hire as many as 10,000 agents, with 1,000+ tentative job offers issued last week.
- Mounted a visible recruiting push on social media, including an ideological appeal from senior adviser Stephen Miller urging people to “JOIN.ICE.GOV” to help “mass deport” immigrants and “be the hero America needs.”
- Supercharged ICE’s capacity through a sweeping domestic policy law signed in July 2025, boosting ICE’s annual budget from about $8 billion to roughly $28 billion, making it the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.
Due-Process Concerns and the Push to Go Faster
The Times’ reporting underscores that ICE has already been moving removals more quickly. Data obtained via the Deportation Data Project showed the share of people booked into ICE detention who were deported within 14 days rose from 21% in January to 30% in May.
In July, deportations hit a new high, averaging nearly 1,300 removals per day over a two-week span—up from fewer than 800 per day in the last year of the Biden administration.
Legal and policy experts quoted by the Times warned that performance bonuses tied to removal speed risk short-circuiting due-process protections. Former DHS official Scott Shuchart called the idea “ungodly unethical,” likening it to paying judges to close cases faster. Kathleen Bush-Joseph of the Migration Policy Institute said the episode reflects how quickly the agency is testing new methods to meet the administration’s targets: “They’re willing to try so many different things to see what sticks.”
How the Video Fits In
The viral video’s core claim—that an eye-catching promise was dangled and then yanked—is consistent with the Times’ account of the announce-and-retract sequence inside ICE.
The speaker’s broader critique, that participants were used for “theatrics” and left “with nothing but gas receipts”, channels public frustration at the speed-over-safeguards posture critics say the scrapped pilot embodied.
As of publication, ICE’s official line (per DHS) is that no such bonus policy was ever authorized, and the internal pilot was discontinued almost immediately after it surfaced.
