A ‘No Kings’ activist and fashion influencer posted a video urging her followers to undermine U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from within, just as the federal government prepares to dramatically expand the agency’s workforce.
Jennine Jacob, a former fashion blogger and founder of the Independent Fashion Bloggers network, posted a video to Instagram on July 8, encouraging her nearly 200,000 followers to “get a job at ICE… especially if you hate what they are doing.” The caption read, “Take weaponized incompetence to a new level. 💪”
In the video, Jacob recommended that her followers study the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a World War II-era handbook designed to help civilians disrupt fascist regimes through bureaucratic foot-dragging and passive resistance. The manual is still available on the CIA’s website.
The manual suggests tactics like “make speeches [at length]” and “bring up irrelevant issues,” as well as “misfile essential documents,” “multiply paperwork,” and “misroute materials.”
The OSS sabotage guide, a product of the CIA’s wartime predecessor, advises employees to slow production by feigning ignorance, making errors, and insisting on redundant procedures. It even recommends holding unnecessary meetings and forming large committees to make basic decisions. While originally aimed at resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe, the document has since circulated online as a tool of modern bureaucratic protest.
“If enough people get hired by ICE and are as incompetent as possible without getting fired, they can actually really do a lot of damage and slow the organization down,” Jacob said in the video. “And you can do all of that and get paid.”
Commenters on Jacob’s post offered additional ideas, such as joining ICE, completing training, and then quitting, which would waste government resources. One wrote: “Hiring and training is very expensive and it goes down the drain.”
Jacob’s call to bureaucratically sabotage ICE emerged just as the agency was gearing up for a significant hiring wave. President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) into law on July 4; the BBB is a comprehensive multi-trillion-dollar package that allocates $170 billion for immigration enforcement efforts.
“The law will also provide ICE with the funding to hire 10,000 new agents, which would allow the rate of deportations to reach as high as 1 million per year. ICE currently has 20,000 law enforcement and support personnel across 400 offices,” according to a July 4 press release from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
“President Trump’s signing the One Big Beautiful Bill is a win for law and order and the safety and security of the American people,” Secretary Kristi Noem said in the press release. “This $165 billion in funding will help the Department of Homeland Security and our brave law enforcement further deliver on President Trump’s mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens and MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!”
It remains unclear whether the Department of Homeland Security is aware of Jacob’s video or whether it can screen out potential saboteurs. The Dallas Express reached out for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.