In April 2026, a claim (archived) circulated online that U.S. President Donald Trump supported a proposal to rename Immigration and Customs Enforcement "National Immigration and Customs Enforcement," meaning the acronym for the organization would change from "ICE" to "NICE" and agents would be called "NICE agents."
The Democratic social media influencer Harry Sisson wrote on Threads:
Trump is awake and he's now demanding that ICE be renamed to NICE so the media has to say "NICE agents" everyday. This is what the president is focused on. Very weird stuff.
The claim also circulated on X (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived) and Reddit (archived). Snopes readers wrote in to ask if it was true.
According to his own Truth Social profile, Trump supported the idea of changing ICE's name to NICE. On April 26, Trump reposted an X post (archived) by the conservative influencer Alyssa Dehen that read, "I want Trump to change ICE to NICE (National Immigration and Customs Enforcement) so the media has to say NICE agents all day everyday."
Trump shared Dehen's post and wrote, "GREAT IDEA!!! DO IT. President DJT"
(@realDonaldTrump, accessed via Truth Social)
Therefore, we rate the claim that Trump supported changing the name ICE to NICE true.
At the time of this writing, both ICE's parent department, the Department of Homeland Security (archived) and the White House (archived) had used the proposed name on their social media profiles.
To legally change ICE's name, DHS would need to submit the proposed name change to Congress for approval. When asked about an estimated timeline or cost for the switch, a department spokesperson replied with a link to a post on the agency's X page that merely said, "ICE is NICE."
We asked the White House the same questions about the timeline and cost of the name change and await a reply.
What's in a name (change)?
At the time of this writing, it remained unclear if or when the Trump administration would legally change ICE's name.
The suggested change was similar to an early Trump administration executive order to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War.
That order acknowledged that while Trump asked administration officials to use the new name in daily communications, a legal change required approval from Congress.
At the time, the Encyclopedia Britannica wrote,
Because the Constitution gives Congress the power to create executive departments and agencies, and because the Department of Defense was so named under Congressional legislation, President Donald Trump cannot legally reinstate the department's official name under an executive order.
This would also apply to ICE.
In April 2026, the Department of Defense included the name change to the Department of War in a package of legislative proposals for Congress to consider for the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2027. The act sets the budget and policies for the department.
The proposal said on pages 60 and 61 that the name change would require 7,594 changes to existing laws and cost the department $51.5 million in fiscal year 2026. The department did not foresee further costs from the name change.
It was unclear how much a name change from ICE to NICE might cost or how DHS would fund it.
ICE and DHS have faced intense scrutiny and criticism over their immigration enforcement operations since the start of the second Trump administration. For further reading, Snopes has reported on dozens of claims about both bodies and their work to enforce the Trump administration's immigration policy.