ICE Bae

About

ICE Bae is a nickname given to Texas border patrol agent Kiara Cervantes given to her when spotted in 2019 wearing makeup and looking put-together while Vice President Mike Pence was visiting the border.

Origin

On July 12th, 2019, Vice President Mike Pence visited the detention centers at the Texas-Mexico Border. Two days later, Twitter user @VibeHi^[1] spotted the agent in new footage and posted a picture of her to Twitter captioning it "Tell AOC we breaking up and tell ICE to come get me! 😂" (shown below). The post gained over 2,400 likes and 350 retweets in two days.

Spread

On July 14th, 2019, Twitter users began to respond to the photo with frustration or appreciation due to ICE's controversial position held in the U.S.'s immigration debate. Cervantes^[3] herself tweeted in reponse, "Soooo it’s crazy…. but here I am. I’m hearing something about a viral picture. I would like to say i was just doing my job.. providing security for the visit of @VP. It was an honor and I take a lot of pride in my job!" (shown below, left). The tweet garnered over 9,900 likes and 1,200 retweets in two days. On July 15th, Twitter user @SonOfDadAndMom^[2] tweeted, "feeling cute might separate families at the concentration camp later #IceBae" (shown below, right) which accumulated over 4,200 likes and 800 retweets. Many Twitter users felt outraged at the people who make light of such a serious situation.

That same day, Kiara Cervantes posted a video of herself to Twitter to prove that she is the woman from the picture (shown below). The video gained over 5,800 likes in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References