Final week, the Division of Homeland Safety debuted a recruitment technique to increase the ranks of ICE: sign-on bonuses. Because of a rush of money from the One Massive Stunning Invoice Act, the division introduced that it’s providing as much as $50,000 to newly employed federal law-enforcement brokers. The provide caught the attention of 1 group that gave the impression to be notably happy by the federal government’s thrilling profession alternative. On Telegram, an account linked to the Toledo, Ohio, chapter of the Proud Boys declared: “Toledo Boys residing excessive on the hog proper now!!”
Whether or not members of the extremist group have pursued job openings at ICE, a lot much less been employed and handed a giant test, is unclear. I requested the Toledo chapter whether or not its members are making use of to work for the federal government, however I didn’t hear again. Tricia McLaughlin, a Division of Homeland Safety spokesperson, stated in an e-mail that “any particular person who needs to hitch ICE will endure intense background investigations and safety clearances—no exception.” However the Toledo Proud Boys’ enthusiasm for the work, if nothing else, is telling. The Trump administration is enacting a mass-deportation marketing campaign centered round aggression and cruelty. The Proud Boys are staunchly towards undocumented immigrants, and have repeatedly intimidated and bodily antagonized their enemies (throughout the first Trump administration, they usually acquired into fights with left-wing protesters). The group’s beliefs are being pursued—however by ICE and the federal government itself.
There was each purpose to imagine that the Proud Boys would run wild in Donald Trump’s second time period. On his first day again within the White Home, Trump pardoned everybody who was convicted for crimes associated to the riot on January 6, 2021—together with roughly 100 identified members of the Proud Boys and different extremist organizations. That they had obtained a few of the harshest sentences tied to the Capitol riot: All 14 individuals who have been nonetheless in jail when Trump returned to workplace have been affiliated with both the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers. On the time, a terrorism skilled on the Council on International Relations warned that the pardons “may very well be catastrophic for public security,” sending a message to extremist teams that violence within the title of MAGA “is authorized and bonafide.” Enrique Tarrio, the previous chief of the Proud Boys who himself was pardoned, introduced that there can be hell to pay: “I’m completely happy that the president is focusing not on retribution, and specializing in success,” he stated on Infowars, “however I’ll inform you that I’m not gonna play by these guidelines.”
Six months later, although, the Proud Boys have been surprisingly quiet. Based on knowledge from the Armed Battle Location & Occasion Information (ACLED), a nonprofit that tracks political violence, the Proud Boys have been much less energetic in 2025 than over the previous a number of years. Since his launch, Tarrio’s most distinguished motion has been serving to launch “ICERAID,” a web site that pays individuals in crypto in trade for reporting undocumented immigrants. Tarrio, who didn’t reply to an interview request by means of a lawyer, additionally co-hosts frequent livestreams on X. In a single episode of a livestream final month, Tarrio nursed a cigarette whereas a person who recognized himself solely as “Patriot Rob” waxed nostalgic about how inescapable the Proud Boys as soon as have been. In 2020, members of the militant group confirmed up at anti-lockdown rallies throughout the nation, clashed with racial-justice protesters, and earned a shout-out from Trump himself throughout a presidential debate. (The Proud Boys so regularly traveled to Washington, D.C., for numerous sorts of protests in 2020 that Politico wrote about their favourite bar.) Now, Patriot Rob stated on the livestream, “there’s only a few of us left.”
It’s unclear what number of Proud Boy chapters there are in the present day, however some appear to be defunct: These in Philadelphia and Michigan have let their web sites flip into useless hyperlinks and stopped posting on Telegram, the social platform of alternative for many Proud Boys. I reached out to 10 Proud Boy chapters and requested interviews. None was keen to talk with me. After I instructed a Miami chapter that I had spoken with specialists on the present state of the Proud Boys, somebody who recognized himself solely as “Alex” responded: “Consultants’ lol Consultants at what? Sucking cock Y’all can go fuck yourselves!” The East Tennessee Chapter, maybe mistaking my title for a lady’s, replied by saying, “We’re going to request some nudes as a way to verify your id 👌.”
The Proud Boys haven’t disappeared. They have been noticed at a “Tesla Takedown” occasion in Salem, Oregon; marched with anti-abortion activists in San Francisco; and confronted protesters outdoors of the “Alligator Alcatraz” ICE facility. Different right-wing teams have been extra energetic. After the Texas floods final month, a frontrunner of the Patriot Entrance claimed that the extremist group was concerned in restoration efforts to assist “European peoples.” Patriot Entrance, which has additionally held a number of marches throughout the nation for the reason that begin of Trump’s second time period, stays a small group. Estimates put its membership at 200 to 300 individuals, in contrast with the hundreds that researchers imagine are, or a minimum of have been, within the Proud Boys. On the entire, militia teams are “preserving it low-key,” Amy Cooter, the deputy director and a co-founder of the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism, instructed me. Because the begin of the 12 months, ACLED has recorded 108 extremist protests nationwide—not even half as many as at this level in 2022. This isn’t fully sudden. As my colleague Adrienne LaFrance has reportedwithin the Nineteen Nineties, a surge of militia exercise and white nationalism appeared to die down after the Oklahoma Metropolis bombing—however these actions by no means disappeared; they merely moved underground.
Right now, a part of the rationale for the obvious decline is that even after Trump’s pardons, far-right teams are nonetheless coping with the hangover of January 6. Militia teams have at all times been comparatively splintered, however the riot exacerbated the fissures. Some Oath Keeper teams are divided on whether or not their chief, Stewart Rhodes, went too far on January 6, when he rallied Oath Keepers to breach the Capitol, Cooter stated. Some members have been vocal about leaving the group, citing Rhodes’s management. In 2022, the Southern Poverty Regulation Middle recorded 5 energetic Oath Keepers chapters, down from 70 in 2020. (The variety of present chapters isn’t clear.)
In the meantime, the Proud Boys fractured in 2021, after Reuters uncovered courtroom information indicating that Tarrio had served as an informant to native and federal regulation enforcement earlier than the group was based. (“I don’t recall any of this,” Tarrio instructed Reuters on the time.) Many Proud Boys chapters disavowed him, together with a part of his personal in Miami. The town now has two separate chapters, an anti-Tarrio and a pro-Tarrio one. In January, I emailed the Toledo Proud Boys chapter to ask about Tarrio. I obtained an unattributed reply expressing disappointment that Tarrio had “turned his again and squealed on brothers.” I reached again out this week, and obtained an analogous response: “Tarrio is a rat, punk, and low life!” The respondent additionally stated this: “You breland, are precisely what President Trump stated. .faux information! I’m positive you most popular the final potatoe!” (I requested if by “the final potato,” the account meant Joe Biden. “Ahhh sure. .SMH,” the respondent stated. “You understand. .the illegitimate one! The stolen election one! The one who wandered round aimlessly!”)
The larger purpose that these far-right teams stay underground is that the Trump administration’s aggressive agenda has left them with little to do. One of many motivating points for the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and different extremist teams is robust opposition to undocumented immigrants. After the presidential election, a frontrunner of the Texas chapter of the Three Percenters, a militia group, reportedly wrote to Trump to supply manpower in enacting mass deportations. However ICE and different federal businesses are participating in forceful motion towards immigrants backed by the state in a approach that surpasses what the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys may ever do. ICE brokers, not far-right militias, are those who’ve smashed by means of automobile home windows, thrown individuals into unmarked vans, and detained them indefinitely.
Even other than immigration, “teams are taking a hands-off strategy proper now as a result of their pursuits are sometimes aligned with the federal government,” Freddy Cruz, a researcher on the Western States Middle, a nonprofit that tracks extremism, instructed me. The Proud Boys was began in 2016 partly to double down on conventional gender norms. Gavin McInnes, the group’s founder, has described the Proud Boys as a “pro-Western fraternity” for males who “lengthy for the times when ladies have been ladies and males have been males.” The Proud Boys’ excessive pro-male views are much less distinct than they as soon as have been, as MAGA has embraced Andrew Tate and different overtly misogynistic figures of the so-called manosphere. Because of this, the Proud Boys have one much less level to rally round.
Nonetheless, the Proud Boys and different right-wing militias won’t keep underground without end. Underneath the appropriate situations, they may surge as soon as once more. “These teams are actually aware of information cycles,” Cooter stated. They’ve particular flash factors—immigration, the Second Modification, and supposed “election integrity”—that may mobilize them in sure contexts, she defined. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and different established far-right teams nonetheless have infrastructure, a sturdy model title, and the precedent that Trump may pardon them if issues go awry. In Might, Tarrio was reportedly invited to Mar-a-Lago, the place he briefly spoke with Trump. Newer teams proceed to arrange. Patriot Entrance, for instance, has teamed up with “Lively Golf equipment,” a unfastened community of white supremacists and neo-Nazis who run their very own mixed-martial-arts combat golf equipment. Collectively, all of this might assist give extremist teams a head begin that they didn’t have within the first Trump administration, when the Proud Boys and plenty of different militia teams started to seek out their footing. The items are there, even when the second isn’t but.
