A far-right influencer with extensive ties to extremist figures and a history of demonizing immigrants and Muslims has been given exclusive and ongoing access to Immigration and Customs Enforcement enforcement operations, filming propaganda in explicit service of the federal agency’s mission to mass-deport millions of immigrants.
Ben Bergquam, host of “Law and Border” on Real America’s Voice News and a correspondent for Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, frequently embeds with ICE and takes part in ride-alongs with agents during immigration raids, filming as officers detain people in the streets and pull them from their homes. Bergquam often edits the resulting footage to blur out ICE agents’ faces while keeping their detainees in focus, and then broadcasts the videos to more than 1.5 million followers across social media.
In April, on the Friday before Easter, Bergquam posted a short video of himself walking the streets of an unidentified city with ICE agents, searching for people to arrest. The agents’ faces were blurred.
“Every day is Good Friday when we’re pickin’ up illegals!” Bergquam said with a grin.
That same month, in Miami, he rode in a vehicle driven by ICE agents during a pre-dawn mission, filming agents as they removed a man from his truck and arrested him. Bergquam turned his camera from the arrest to focus on an elderly woman standing outside a house nearby, crying out in Spanish to the detained man as agents took him away.
Although some mainstream news outlets have been granted ride-alongs with ICE over the past few years, none has the consistent and unfettered access Bergquam enjoys. And that relationship appears to be by design. In his videos, Bergquam carries himself more like a cheerleader than an objective documentarian of federal law enforcement. He often wears an “ICE” baseball hat during ride-alongs and delivers monologues supporting the agency’s aggressive tactics. He regularly calls on agents to arrest not only immigrants but anyone who opposes the agency — he has described anti-ICE protesters as “traitors,” “a cancer,” “cockroaches” and the “enemies within.” A week after U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers were filmed shooting and killing Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Bergquam said on a podcast that the protester was “rightfully killed by ICE.”
Bergquam’s content has been boosted by prominent right-wing pundits and officials, including Gregory Bovino, the recently retired Border Patrol commander who oversaw the brutal ICE crackdown in Minneapolis.
Bergquam’s association with ICE has received some press coverage over the last year, but an MS NOW analysis reveals the scale and depth of the relationship he built with the agency. Bergquam — who once accompanied border czar Tom Homan on an immigration raid — has claimed to embed with ICE “almost every week” since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. He has broadcast footage of himself with ICE officers multiple times in Chicago, and has posted dispatches from Indianapolis, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Florida, Baltimore and elsewhere. He was once allowed on board a federal aircraft holding deportees in Gary, Indiana, where he filmed the faces of handcuffed migrants sitting inside.
[ICE protesters] want to kill us … They are so demon possessed. Many of these people wanted to be Renee Good. They wanted to be Alex Pretti because they are willing to die to destroy this country.”
— Ben Bergquam, in conversation with steve bannon
Similar scenes have played out on Bergquam’s ICE videos in cities across the country over the past year and a half. In Phoenix, he filmed agents busting through the driver-side window of a car to reach their target, a man shouting “no illegal!” Bergquam, standing only a few feet away, lectured the man as officers pulled him from the vehicle. “Listen to law enforcement, comply with their orders, and this won’t happen,” he said.
Sometimes, in quieter moments, Bergquam gets agents to open up about their personal views. During a ride-along in Chicago, an ICE agent lamented state-level efforts to protect immigrants and hinder federal deployments.
“They are trying to tie our hands behind our back … with the state sanctuary policies,” the agent said.
In Harlingen, Texas, Bergquam was given access to an airfield where chained immigrants were loaded onto planes for their deportation. “Bad hombres, as President Trump would call them,” he said to a nearby ICE agent, who laughed.
A federal lawsuit also suggests that there are ICE interactions Bergquam films but then doesn’t post. In January, a Somali American U.S. citizen sued the Trump administration alleging that he was racially profiled by ICE agents in Minneapolis. The agents, according to the lawsuit, stopped him and his mother while they were shoveling snow outside their home, demanding that they prove they were “not illegal.” Bergquam accompanied the agents and filmed the interaction, the lawsuit says. The suit alleges that the agents demanded the mother remove her niqab — an Islamic face covering — while questioning her about speaking in a “foreign language,” but MS NOW could find no such interaction in the videos Bergquam posted online. (Bergquam didn’t respond to a request for comment about the incident.)
Bergquam makes no secret of the bias behind his content, which stands in resolute favor of the agencies trying to fulfill Trump’s promise to mass-deport millions of people, in many cases tearing them away from their families and communities.
“Deport every illegal” is one of Bergquam’s catchphrases, a reappropriation of the abbreviation DEI, which stands for diversity, equity and inclusion. Another catchphrase is “God bless ICE,” which Bergquam filmed himself saying inside a Florida ICE facility in May. Behind him in the video, shared on X, were a dozen or so immigrants sitting in handcuffs, staring up at the camera.
For ICE officials, the feeling seems to be mutual. During an episode of Bannon’s “War Room” in October, now-retired Houston Field Office Director Bret Bradford explained how Bergquam’s content benefits the agency.
“All these activist groups throw out all kinds of misinformation out there to try and get people on their side,” Bradford said. “It’s not true. And that’s why it’s important to do these interviews and have people like Ben out here tell our story.”
ICE did not respond to a request for comment on this story. Bergquam told MS NOW that he does “not speak for ICE,” adding that he only reports on “the great work they do.”
“This is why America doesn’t trust you guys anymore,” he wrote in an email to MS NOW. “Your bias is so obvious yet you still pretend to be news.” He added: “God Bless ICE and everyone who honors their oath.”
A MAGA stunt artist
Bergquam, 43, says he grew up in a humble, politically agnostic household in Dallas. In an interview with One America News Network in May, he said he “wasn’t super political” until he went to college at Fresno State University in California, where he claimed he “had illegal aliens getting free rides sitting right next to me.”
He said his politics lurched to the right as he spent time in California, which he cast as having gone “from being a sane-minded, God-fearing, hardworking state to the cesspool that it is today” with all the “transgender” and “radical LBGT crap.” He broke into politics by fighting against same sex marriage rights, got involved in Tea Party activism and ultimately threw his support — and later his career — behind Trump, by participating in a series of viral video stunts aimed at trolling MAGA’s opponents.
In 2019, Bergquam and Laura Loomer — the far-right activist and Trump confidant who casts herself as “pro-white nationalism” and a “proud Islamophobe” — were arrested for trespassing at California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s mansion in Sacramento. Bergquam, dressed as a racist caricature of a Mexican he called “Pancho Benny,” said at the time that the stunt was meant to imitate migrants who “hop the wall” into the U.S. from Mexico.
“The whole idea is to expose the hypocrite Democrats,” he told The Sacramento Bee. “We went to test — to see if everyone is welcome.” (The charges against him were later dropped.)
That same year, Bergquam accompanied a then-relatively unknown QAnon conspiracy theorist named Marjorie Taylor Greene on a trip to Washington to harass various Democratic members of Congress. Video footage shows Bergquam and Greene demanding to be let into Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office, goading the congresswoman to “come out and play.” Eventually the duo, along with a group of companions, drew a border wall in Ocasio-Cortez’s guest book and moved on to harass Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, whom Greene falsely described as unofficial representatives because they had been sworn into office on the Quran, not the Bible. (Greene was elected to Congress the next year.)
By 2020, Bergquam had turned his MAGA video stunts into a career and aligned himself with a number of the far-right figures and extremist groups that marked Trump’s first term. In May of that year, after he joined about a dozen anti-vaccine activists to confront Fresno City Council President Miguel Arias outside his home, the local press noted his frequent association with the Proud Boys.
In an email to MS NOW, Bergquam denied being a member but praised the group, along with the Oath Keepers, who shared a leadership role in storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I’ve never been a member of the Proud Boys, but I thank God for them,” he said. “They were one of the only groups (along with the Oath Keepers) standing up against the violent Antifa terrorists during President Trump‘s first term.”
Card-carrying member or not, Bergquam often expresses anti-Muslim and racist views that wouldn’t be out of place on a private Proud Boys chat server. He has stated on social media that “Satan created Islam,” that the religion is “not compatible with America or Europe” and that “England is dead unless you drive the Muslims out.” He also described Muslims as hastening “the destruction of the West,” repeatedly calling for a “Crusade 2.0.,” a reference to the medieval holy wars waged by European Christian rulers against Muslims in the Middle East. It is a term commonly invoked by modern white supremacists. (This month, after two teenagers shot and killed three people at a San Diego mosque, police discovered a racist screed they had reportedly written, titled “The New Crusade.”)
Bergquam once reposted a clip to Instagram of a crude racist joke. “What do sharks and people have in common?” the video shows a man asking another man. “The great ones are white!”
Asked about his comments, along with other bigoted messages and memes he shared, Bergquam told MS NOW they were among his “greatest” social media posts.
As Bergquam rose in status as a major MAGA influencer, he made repeated trips to the U.S.-Mexico border to produce anti-immigrant propaganda, falsely depicting immigration as an “invasion” of “military-aged” male migrants who regularly commit crime, including rape. The videos he created, part of his “Law and Border” series, often featured sympathetic interviews with MAGA-aligned police officers, sheriffs and CBP officials, all depicting themselves as abandoned by then-President Joe Biden but doing their best to keep the hordes of criminal immigrants at bay — a narrative Bergquam was eager to boost.
Two of Bergquam’s frequent “Law and Border” collaborators were men of Mexican heritage with criminal histories of their own. The Daily Beast reported that one of his companions, Oscar Ramirez, was deported to Mexico, his country of birth, in 2012 for allegedly trafficking methamphetamine into the U.S. He was only able to join Bergquam during his jaunts to the border because the Trump administration had granted him a visa in 2020.
Bergquam’s other frequent companion at the border, Anthony Aguero, who was born to Mexican immigrant parents in Texas, also had a criminal history. Years earlier, according to The Daily Beast, Aguero pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of family violence assault. He was also arrested and sentenced to two years in prison for vehicular assault while intoxicated. (Footage from Jan. 6 shows him among the MAGA mob inside the U.S. Capitol, though he never faced charges related to the riots.)
Bergquam himself was arrested and charged with assault in 2019 for allegedly attacking a camera operator from Telemundo outside a CBP facility in Clint, Texas. The facility had become the focus of national attention after reports of migrant children being kept in inhumane conditions and separated from their parents. Details of the scuffle with the Telemundo employee are unclear, but Bergquam was convicted of assault, court records show, with the conviction later dismissed on appeal.
“I was assaulted by a Telemundo cameraman at the Clint Border Patrol Station and then lied about by a CNN reporter,” Bergquam told MS NOW. “Thankfully, the appeals court saw the truth.” Telemundo didn’t respond to a request for comment, and the camera operator couldn’t be reached for comment.
ICE’s favorite journalist
It’s unclear when Bergquam first established his relationship with ICE. But in a 2022 episode of “Law and Border,” he interviewed Tom Homan, who served as acting ICE director during Trump’s first term. Homan articulated a version of the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, insisting that Democratic support for immigrants is part of a wider nefarious scheme to win elections for the left.
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“More of them [are] counted in the census, in sanctuary cities, which results in more seats in the House for the Democrats,” Homan said. “It’s all about perpetual power.”
As Homan assumed the role of “border czar” during Trump’s second term, Bergquam became a frequent companion of ICE during the agency’s intensifying immigration raids.
“Look at all these illegals,” Bergquam said inside an ICE vehicle this past January, pointing his camera at a Maryland Home Depot parking lot where day laborers gathered. When agents followed and then pulled over a van that picked up one such day laborer, Bergquam filmed the agents arresting him, zooming in on the man’s face.
“When you start picking up guys at Home Depot, 60% of them typically have a criminal record,” Bergquam said into the camera, offering no evidence for this claim. “Some of them are violent crimes. And you’re going to come and pick them up and have them work with you? With your kids? It’s just insane.”
Sitting next to Bergquam in the car was a man with a violent criminal past of his own. Josh Fulfer is a frequent Bergquam collaborator, a MAGA influencer who goes by the moniker Oreo Express. In 2016, Fulfer was arrested in Fresno for domestic violence, eventually pleading no contest to a battery charge, with a more severe charge of corporal injury against a spouse dismissed, the newspaper GV Wire reported. As part of the agreement, Fulfer was prohibited from owning a gun or ammunition. He was arrested again in 2022 when his name appeared in a state gun-ownership database.
During Bergquam and Fulfer’s trip to Maryland, the pair took time to visit a federal courthouse in Baltimore, where they harangued Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the immigrant and father of two wrongly sent by the Trump administration to CECOT, the infamous prison in El Salvador, on uncorroborated charges that he belonged to the gang MS-13. A court had ordered his return to the U.S.
“How do you feel about the leftists protecting you?” Bergquam says to Abrego, walking silently with his attorneys outside the courthouse. “How many additional crimes have you committed that you haven’t been prosecuted for?” After Abrego got into a car and shut the door, Bergquam looked into the camera and scoffed: “His attorneys think they’re so noble protecting a criminal scumbag illegal.”
Berquam expresses rage at those who stand up to ICE — often in the company of ICE agents themselves. During a recent ride-along in Chicago, he filmed protesters outside the ICE vehicle. “All these activists pulling up, trying to dox us, get our plate number,” Bergquam seethed. “Scumbags out here … If you want to see the enemies in our country, it’s these people right here.” When a protester wearing an N95 mask approached the vehicle, attempting to talk to the agents inside, Bergquam can be heard saying, “Can’t hear you with that gay mask.”
Beyond his “Law and Border” videos and social media posts, his propaganda targeting anti-ICE protesters reaches a large audience on Bannon’s “War Room,” now one of the most popular shows on Real America’s Voice. Bergquam is a recurring guest who Bannon describes as the show’s “best field reporter,” calling in from ICE immigration raids and from the protests against them.
“They want to kill us,” he once told Bannon from Minneapolis, referring to the protesters pushing back against ICE’s occupation of the city. He added: “The saddest part about what I saw and what I’m seeing in Minneapolis is: This is demonic manifestation in real life. They are so demon possessed. Many of these people wanted to be Renee Good. They wanted to be Alex Pretti because they are willing to die to destroy this country.”
Once, when calling in to Bannon’s show from demonstrations against ICE in Los Angeles, Bergquam compared anti-ICE protesters to a scab. “Sometimes you got to pull that scab off and squirt out the pus, and in this case, you see the pus all around me. As a nation, that’s what we’ve got to do. It’s gonna be ugly, it’s gonna be dirty, it’s gonna be not fun in some cases. But you’ve got to do that.”
“It’s a cancer, it’s an infection, it’s gangrene,” he added.
As the Trump administration has rushed to silence or discredit any critical coverage as the “fake news media,” it has routinely elevated figures like Bergquam, loyalists who can be relied on to produce propaganda that aligns perfectly with the MAGA agenda. This motley crew of influencers often get exclusive access to White House events and roundtables, to the Pentagon press room and to law enforcement operations.
A.J. Bauer, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Alabama and author of the new book “Making the Liberal Media,” told MS NOW that this strategy is dangerous in part because the general public “still understands journalism to be somewhat independent from the state.”
The Trump administration, by inviting ostensibly independent influencers like Bergquam to embed with ICE raids, gives itself the veneer of transparency and oversight, when in reality they are inviting propagandists who already share the goals of the state, Bauer said.
The propaganda Bergquam is producing, Bauer argues, is an attempt to create a pretext for the increasing expansion of ICE, and for a crackdown on any dissent.
“I think that ICE in many ways overstepped in Minneapolis, and I think that the government is kind of waiting for its next opportunity to reapproach,” Bauer said. “I think a lot of the messaging that this guy looks like he’s doing is designed to seed the fuels for that, getting people ready for when ICE grows further, engaging in more aggressive tactics. Certain segments of the population that consume this kind of media are going to be much more willing to go along with it.”
Last month the Trump administration official who oversaw Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis boosted Bergquam on social media.
Bergquam had posted a video from one of his ICE ride-alongs on X. It showed him with agents during a traffic stop in Florida arresting an undocumented man. During the stop, the footage shows a passing truck rear-end another truck, purportedly driven by another undocumented man, whom ICE quickly apprehends.
“As we’re picking up one illegal another illegal crashes right next to us,” Bergquam wrote on X. “The truth is most Americans can’t comprehend how many illegals are in our country. Thank God, ICE and America First states like Florida are fighting to fix it!”
Bovino retweeted Bergquam, pointing to his video as evidence that immigrants are inherently dangerous.
“Yep … 100 million. Change my mind,” Bovino wrote, referring to his call to deport roughly a third of America’s population. “We’re dodging uninsured motorists like locusts, white-knuckling the wheel, praying we survive every drive, while they import third-world driving habits that kill Americans. Mass deportations aren’t extreme, they’re basic survival.”
Bergquam then retweeted Bovino’s comment.
In 2010, Bergquam was involved in a fatal driving accident of his own. California Highway Patrol, according to a report at the time from CBS47, said it appeared that Bergquam “failed to yield the right of way” at an intersection, turning his truck — and a trailer carrying campaign signs for a local Republican candidate — into traffic, killing a 57-year-old motorcyclist. The deceased man’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit, which court records show was dismissed after an undisclosed settlement.
Asked about this fatal crash, Bergquam did not deny failing to yield at the intersection, but did deny being sued.
He told MS NOW he prays for the family of the motorcyclist “every day.”
Christopher Mathias is a freelance reporter and MS NOW contributor. He is the author of “To Catch a Fascist: The Fight to Expose the Radical Right.”