President Trump is floating a rebranding effort that might cool down some critics of his tough crackdown on illegal immigration — and infuriate others.
Trump on Saturday asked Americans whether the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, should be changed to NICE.
“The concept I have had for quite some time — A strong feeling that the name of these Patriots, ‘ICE,’ should be changed to, ‘NICE,’ in that it will totally discombobulate Crooked, Dishonest, and Unpatriotic Reporters and Journalists,” he wrote in an online elevator pitch on his Truth Social account.
The president then set up an online poll between the tags “ICE Agents” and “NICE Agents” which drew 10,000 votes in its first hour. The poll did not say which pick was in the lead.
He continued that ICE, “has been abused by the Fake News Media at levels never seen before,” and called the agents “Great Patriots who work hard, and do a fantastic job in a very hostile environment.”
Then Trump spelled out how his new concept might work– and vex the US-hating left in the process.
“For them to say, ‘We went to a NICE Facility today,’ as opposed to ‘ICE’ or, ‘NICE Agents have deported a Violent Drug Dealer,’ they won’t be able to handle it, they will go totally crazy! All it means is adding an ‘N’ (‘National’) to ‘ICE (“Immigration and Customs Enforcement”) — A much more prestigious name.”
It was not entirely clear if Trump was serious about the ICE renaming. Also Saturday, he published a poll about what was the preferred spelling for calling the opposition party “Dumocrats” or “Dumbocrats.” The Post reached out to the White House about the ICE poll.
The president’s NICE remarks come after weeks of violent clashes between agitators and law enforcement outside the Delaney Hall migrant detention facility, in Newark.
An influx of out-of-state agitators were recently arrested during the chaotic standoff with law enforcement outside the facility, The Post exclusively reported.
At least two of the dozen arrested have ties to the radical nonprofit Sunrise Movement, one of the dark money groups clamoring to “shut down Delaney Hall” and “abolish ICE” since the unrest began, according to information from social media.
The killing of Alex Pretti and Rene Good during anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis in January became a rallying cry for the left and the subject of a Bruce Springsteen song.
Back in 2002, the Homeland Security Act reorganization created an agency with a different name. It was the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but BICE never took, and DHS announced the official name change to ICE in 2007.
