Is the leader of the Proud Boys now employed by ICE?
Executive summary
No — Enrique Tarrio is not now employed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Multiple fact-checks and a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson have stated ICE has never employed Tarrio, even though his name appeared on an online compilation tied to a purported DHS leak [1] [2] [3].
1. How the claim began: a leaked list and a noisy crowd
The episode began when a whistleblower or leak allegedly exposed roughly 4,500 names tied to ICE and Border Patrol, a cache republished and curated by the watchdog site ICE List and amplified across social media and some outlets [4] [3]. That database included an entry for “Enrique Tarrio,” but the listing did not identify him as an ICE officer and instead labeled him with descriptors such as “Propagandist; Agitator,” which appears to be a metadata or crowd-sourced tag rather than proof of employment [3] [5].
2. Official denials and fact-check consensus
DHS and ICE officially deny the claim: a DHS spokesperson told Reuters that ICE has never employed Tarrio, and independent fact-checks by AP, Reuters, US News, Newsday and others reached the same conclusion that Tarrio is not and never has been an ICE employee [1] [2] [3] [6]. Snopes and other debunking outlets likewise report that the agency and Tarrio himself have denied employment, and that the online list’s entry does not equate to verified agency personnel records [7] [5].
3. Tarrio’s response, media behavior and why the story spread
Tarrio publicly reacted with sarcasm and later denied the claim, telling Newsweek he would “love” the job but is not employed by ICE and even considered legal action over the claim [8] [5]. The allegation fit a combustible media ecosystem — a high-profile January 6 defendant, a leaked DHS dataset and public outrage over ICE actions — which made a sensational but unverified association easy to circulate and hard to immediately correct [9] [4].
4. What the available reporting does — and does not — prove
Reporting confirms the presence of Tarrio’s name in an online list tied to a leaked dataset and confirms official denial of ICE employment by DHS and ICE spokespeople; it does not, however, supply any authenticated ICE personnel record showing employment nor evidence that the agency ever hired him [4] [1] [2]. Where the sources disagree is only in how prominently they emphasize the leak’s existence versus the formal denial; reputable fact-checks uniformly conclude the central employment claim is false [3] [1] [2].
5. Why this matters and the hidden incentives in circulation
The story illustrates two hazards: first, that scraped or leaked compilations can contain mislabeled or crowd-tagged entries that do not equal employment records [3] [5], and second, that political actors and attention-seeking accounts benefit from linking a convicted, well-known far‑right figure to a federal enforcement agency — an implicit agenda that fuels rapid sharing regardless of verification [9] [4]. Readers should weigh the DHS/ICE denials and consistent fact-checks as decisive on the specific question of employment while recognizing how partial data, provocative claims and social amplification created a plausible‑sounding but false narrative [1] [2] [7].