Richard Beam said he always knew working at ICE would be a contentious and, at times, controversial position. But he believed in the mission, and in his job to inform the public about the agency – by telling the truth, he said.
He remembered that all changed one day in 2025.
Beam was working in a cubicle at ICE’s Santa Ana field office when he hopped on a routine weekly call with colleagues and supervisors, he said. The group would go over best practices in their public affairs work, and Beam and his coworkers would be given updates, directives and guidance from immigration and Department of Homeland Security leadership in Washington, D.C, he recalled.
But this call was different, he said.
For the first time in his 20-year career as a federal spokesperson, he was told to respond to inquiries not with the facts of a case, but with spin, Beam said. Criticize the Biden administration. Praise Trump. Omit information that doesn’t fit the political narrative. Whether or not he answered any questions about a case was an afterthought, he said.
“We were providing responses that spoke to the criminal history, but it didn’t always distinguish the difference between being charged and being convicted of,” he said. “And at some point we would also see language in the responses that [was] political, specifically saying ‘thanks to the Trump administration, we’re doing X. Because of the Biden administration, we have this consequence.’ And that’s not what career public affairs officers traditionally do.”
From then on, it was made clear the Department of Homeland Security wanted a bigger role in overseeing how ICE responded to questions about operations and arrests, according to Beam. This was a departure from how they previously operated, he said.
“None of us have ever had these crazy experiences where the political appointees were so involved in what we did,” he said.
Months later, Beam would eventually come to an agreement to leave ICE after personal objections and a threatened transfer, he said. His last day as a federal employee was Dec. 31, 2025.
In response to Beam’s claims that he received instructions to engage in political messaging, DHS provided a written statement on Jan. 17.
“This is nothing more than complaining by a former disgruntled employee. President Biden let in millions of criminal illegal aliens and unvetted individuals into the U.S. Now, under President Trump and Secretary Kristi Noem we are delivering on the President’s mandate to arrest the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, terrorists, and gang members.”
Pride in joining ICE
When Beam became an ICE officer five years ago, he could hold his head high. The job was important, he felt, and rewarding.
“I felt very proud of what ICE’s mission was when I got there, because it was literally removing people that had terrible criminal convictions – not just charges, but convictions,” he said.
From October 2021 to September 2022, 78.2% of the average population in ICE’s custody who were arrested by ICE had criminal convictions. That is a sharp contrast to the 45.4% of the average population with criminal convictions arrested by ICE during the same period in 2024 and 2025, according to ICE data archived by the Deportation Data Project.
Beam’s career as a federal spokesperson began in 2005 when he became a public affairs officer for the Veterans Affairs office in Long Beach. Helping veterans was personal to Beam. One of his older brothers, a Navy veteran, took his own life in the late 90s after struggling with his mental health.
“I get to do things for veterans … I couldn’t save my brother, but what could I do for somebody else?” Beam said.
In 2021, he began working for ICE.
For years, he took great pride in providing the media and members of the public with information about ICE’s operations. He said he believed in the mission.
But the directive he received to engage in political messaging in 2025 angered him.
“Having taken an oath to [serve] the public, having felt very proud about what this agency did based on the truth, I now felt like the truth was not the lead,” he said.
New marching orders
That pride he felt in explaining the facts about ICE’s work to the news media and public began to erode after Trump stepped back into the Oval Office, he said.
Beam, personally, found it difficult to stomach some policy shifts that came under Trump 2.0 like when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents began arresting people outside of immigration court.
“I just felt less and less proud of removing people that were contributing (to society) in many ways that sometimes we don’t want to address or admit or accept,” he said. “I think that’s when I became the most concerned because I couldn’t understand a justification for arresting people as they’re seeing judges.”
But, he added, “I hadn’t yet gotten to the point where I really considered leaving because I felt like… I was still involved in very meaningful work.”
Despite the directive to engage in political messaging, Beam said he stuck to the facts.
“Our foundation wasn’t political speak, it was facts. … Regardless of whatever my political beliefs are and whatever party was in office, I would have found that to be contrary to what the public expects out of me, contrary to the job I took,” Beam said.
Beam started changing the way he delivered information to the media, he said. If a response was something he had confirmed himself and based in fact, he told those seeking comment from the agency it was coming from him. If it was spin coming from political appointees, he noted the distinction by attributing the comment to Washington D.C. officials. But that meant some comments he shared with the public side-stepped the facts, he said.
“Did I push out information that I knew was not 100% accurate? … Or the full full truth? I would say that yes, I did,” Beam said.
Months later, he abruptly received an email stating he was being relocated to Washington, D.C. to work for the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a Congressional Affairs Specialist, and if he refused or ignored the reassignment, his job with the federal government could be terminated.
“Your assignment is a new opportunity to continue to support the DHS mission to secure the nation from the many threats we face,” states the reassignment memo obtained and reviewed by a reporter.
Beam had seven days to decide, according to the document.
Questioning the mission
Beam is partly of Mexican ancestry, and having worked for ICE during a time when federal agents are violently rounding up people who look like him and some of his family members became personally “painful,” he said.
“I’m a brown guy… what happens if [federal agents] see me mowing a lawn? It’s a joke, but is it? Is it?” he asked himself.
Beam recalls voicing concerns to his boss that the directive to engage in political messaging when responding to journalists could corrode trust with the media and public.
“I just thought it was a short-sighted mistake because, I mean, any administration lasts at most eight years, but that damage can be so much more long-lasting than the administration that puts something in place,” he said.
“Once you start to tell things other than the facts, I just wondered, how does this impact my integrity?” Beam said. He made it a point to disclose whenever a response to the media had been crafted by DHS officials or by him, he recalled.
Under the second Trump administration, DHS has faced widespread scrutiny on the accuracy of its public statements. Local law enforcement, news organizations, and judges have identified several instances where DHS accounts of incidents involving ICE or Border Patrol agents were contradicted by video evidence, legal documents, or police reports.
Since widespread immigration raids began last June, DHS and ICE officials have repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that ICE officers have experienced a 1,000% increase in assaults. However, a National Public Radio analysis found a 25% increase in assault charges against federal officers from June through mid-September of 2025 when compared with the same period a year prior. Trump’s intensified immigration crackdown has led to more confrontations between ICE officers and civilians across the country, but not to the extent claimed by the White House.
In June, federal officials accused 20-year-old Adrian Martinez of punching a federal officer during an immigration operation at a Pico Rivera Walmart. The criminal complaint charging Martinez with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer included sworn testimony from a Homeland Security Investigations agent that did not include claims that Martinez had assaulted an agent. Security footage from a nearby juice bar didn’t show the alleged assault, though Martinez was off camera at several points.
Beam worried instructions to disseminate propaganda violated the Hatch Act, which was created in 1939 to prevent federal employees working under the executive branch of the government from engaging in politics.
Political activity is defined as any activity directed toward the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group, according to the Department of Justice.
“We have not violated the Hatch Act,” a DHS spokesperson said on Jan. 17 when asked if the political messaging directive Beam claimed happened would be in violation of the 1939 law.
Beam continued on with his job at ICE despite feeling conflicted, until he received the memo notifying him that he would no longer work for the agency.
A blessing in disguise
On Aug. 5, 2025, he learned he was being reassigned to FEMA. And if he declined or refused the reassignment, he “may be subject to removal from Federal service,” the memo stated.
“I just can’t help but to think that it was intentional,” he said.
His son was preparing to begin high school and his son’s mother was receiving cancer treatments. Both are rooted in Southern California and he would not leave them, he said.
Less than a week after getting that email, Beam received a certificate in the mail signed by DHS Secretary Troy Edgar commending him for his “unwavering support and professionalism” in a recent immigration related operation, states the certificate obtained and reviewed by a reporter.
A week or two later, he said he was told by a former mentee at the VA that ICE posted a job listing for his role in the LA area.
“That just tells me that the move to FEMA was a facade. I mean, if they’re recruiting for the job that I held only to move me at the taxpayers’ expense to Washington, D.C.,” he said.
In early 2025, President Trump stated his intentions to shutter FEMA and said states should take on the responsibility to prepare for and respond to major disasters.
Since then, the Trump administration has slashed FEMA’s workforce by thousands.
Since Beam has left his position, ICE has been embroiled in controversy following two fatal shootings in Minnesota.
In early January, the killing of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good by ICE officer Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis sparked national outrage and protests across the country. Within hours of the shooting, Trump administration officials claimed there were violent rioters at the scene and attempted to paint Good as a domestic terrorist who tried to use her vehicle to run over and kill federal agents. Video that emerged from the shooting as well as Good’s own history have contradicted those claims and ignited a fierce debate about the legitimacy of the shooting.
Weeks later, unidentified Border Patrol agents shot and killed 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti while he was documenting federal immigration activity in Minneapolis. Trump administration officials quickly labeled Pretti as a “domestic terrorist who approached agents with a gun.” Videos from the scene contradicted those claims, which show Pretti holding a cell phone while he stood between a woman who was shoved to the ground by an immigration officer. Pretti was shot while being restrained by several federal officers. He had a legal firearm but an officer appeared to remove it immediately prior to the shooting. It never appeared Pretti tried to use the weapon, according to witness videos from the scene.
Federal officers killing civilians, Beam said, was his “greatest fear come true.”
“Every engaged American will have to reconcile for themselves whether what we are being told by administration officials is consistent with what we are seeing. All Americans, regardless of political ideology, deserve nothing less than the truth to allow informed decision-making,” he said. “At this point in time, two inarguable truths are that two Americans are now dead. Based on the limited facts made public, it appears that what we are being told is not only unsupported by those facts but also directly conflicts with the rights afforded to all Americans under the First and Second Amendments.”
Beam said he was placed on administrative leave from ICE in mid-August after formally declining his FEMA reassignment.
He sees it as a blessing and a curse. He no longer has to work for an agency whose actions he now finds questionable, but he’s out of a job.
“I’m in the curse phase, but …I was the luckiest person in the world because … I got to experience the best of (working at ICE). I don’t know. Would I have had the courage to leave if I hadn’t been forced to leave, you know?” he asks himself. “And I don’t know. We’ll never know.”
