An image of an ICE arrest has gone viral, but it's not for the reason that you might think...
The image, shared online by ICE San Diego on Saturday, shows 42-year-old Diego Hernandez standing beside a female ICE agent.
While Hernandez appears downcast in shorts and a South Park T-shirt, much of the internet’s attention has focused on the officer, who is turned away from the camera with her hair tossed to the side and dressed in fitted black pants, per the New York Post.
Since being posted on X, the photo has racked up close to 25 million views, with many users speculating that the setup was no accident.
ICE typically stages arrest images in a way that keeps agents’ faces hidden for security reasons.
But this particular picture quickly turned into a viral talking point, with some questioning whether it was deliberately designed to grab attention.
“Am I f***ing crazy, or is this them trying to humiliate a random immigrant and using an ICE agent’s fat delicious a** just to make sure it gains traction,” one X user wrote while reposting the image.
“The Cartman shirt, the ICE agent facing the wall for no reason other than to show her a**, this is art. The parallels one could draw from this are endless. Satire is dead,” another added.
Others joined in with their own takes, including one person who joked: “Anyone have the federal agents @.”
“If I renounce my citizenship, does that mean they will send her… to my house? asking for a friend,” another commenter quipped.
According to ICE, Hernandez — an undocumented migrant from Mexico — was arrested in San Diego after local police flagged him to federal authorities. Officials said he has multiple drunk driving convictions and has reentered the U.S. illegally several times.
“ICE San Diego arrested Diego Hernandez, 42, an illegal alien from Mexico with multiple convictions for DUI and repeated illegal re-entry into the U.S.,” the agency said in a statement.
“He chose to break our laws again and again. He will remain in ICE custody pending removal- because public safety comes first.”
Hernandez remains in custody and is expected to be deported.
In other bizarre news involving ICE agents, Dean Cain - who famously portrayed Superman in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, is standing firm after confirming that he’s officially joined U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In a fiery interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored on August 11, the 59-year-old made it clear that he’s proud to wear the badge and isn’t interested in what his critics have to say.
Cain didn’t mince words during the broadcast.
“I'm 59 years old and I've joined ICE,” he said. “Go ahead and denigrate my career. But what I'm doing is I'm standing up for the men and women of ICE. I'm a sworn deputy sheriff. I'm a reserve police officer. I have been for almost a decade now.”
He argued that ICE agents are wrongly vilified for carrying out duties assigned by law.
“They are being 'vilified,’ 'attacked' and 'doxed' for ‘trying to do their job’ that the ‘American people hired them for’ and the ‘Congress wrote laws for,’” Cain explained. “They're doing it very, very well.”