Where Have the Proud Boys Gone?

The Atlantic

5 days ago

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security debuted a recruitment strategy to expand the ranks of ICE: sign-on bonuses. Thanks to a rush of cash from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the department announced that it's offering up to $50,000 to newly hired federal law-enforcement agents. The offer caught the eye of one group that seemed to be particularly pleased by the government's exciting career opportunity. On Telegram, an account linked to the Toledo, Ohio, chapter of the Proud Boys declared: 'Toledo Boys living high on the hog right now!!'
Whether members of the extremist group have pursued job openings at ICE, much less been hired and handed a big check, is unclear. I asked the Toledo chapter whether its members are applying to work for the government, but I didn't hear back. Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said in an email that 'any individual who desires to join ICE will undergo intense background investigations and security clearances—no exception.' But the Toledo Proud Boys' enthusiasm for the work, if nothing else, is telling. The Trump administration is enacting a mass-deportation campaign centered around aggression and cruelty. The Proud Boys are staunchly against undocumented immigrants, and have repeatedly intimidated and physically antagonized their enemies (during the first Trump administration, they often got into fights with left-wing protesters). The group's ideals are being pursued—but by ICE and the government itself.
Trump's deportations aren't what they seem
There was every reason to believe that the Proud Boys would run wild in Donald Trump's second term. On his first day back in the White House, Trump pardoned everyone who was convicted for crimes related to the insurrection on January 6, 2021—including roughly 100 known members of the Proud Boys and other extremist organizations. They had received some of the harshest sentences tied to the Capitol riot: All 14 people who were still in prison when Trump returned to office were affiliated with either the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers. At the time, a terrorism expert at the Council on Foreign Relations warned that the pardons 'could be catastrophic for public safety,' sending a message to extremist groups that violence in the name of MAGA 'is legal and legitimate.' Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys who himself was pardoned, announced that there would be hell to pay: 'I'm happy that the president is focusing not on retribution, and focusing on success,' he said on Infowars, 'but I will tell you that I'm not gonna play by those rules.'
Six months later, though, the Proud Boys have been surprisingly quiet. According to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), a nonprofit that tracks political violence, the Proud Boys have been less active in 2025 than over the preceding several years. Since his release, Tarrio's most prominent action has been helping launch 'ICERAID,' a website that pays people in crypto in exchange for reporting undocumented immigrants. Tarrio, who did not respond to an interview request through a lawyer, also co-hosts frequent livestreams on X. In one episode of a livestream last month, Tarrio nursed a cigarette while a man who identified himself only as 'Patriot Rob' waxed nostalgic about how inescapable the Proud Boys once were. In 2020, members of the militant group showed up at anti-lockdown rallies across the country, clashed with racial-justice protesters, and earned a shout-out from Trump himself during a presidential debate. (The Proud Boys so frequently traveled to Washington, D.C., for various kinds of protests in 2020 that Politico wrote about their favorite bar.) Now, Patriot Rob said on the livestream, 'there's very few of us left.'
It's unclear how many Proud Boy chapters there are today, but some seem to be defunct: Those in Philadelphia and Michigan have let their websites turn into dead links and stopped posting on Telegram, the social platform of choice for most Proud Boys. I reached out to 10 Proud Boy chapters and requested interviews. None was willing to speak with me. After I told a Miami chapter that I had spoken with experts on the current state of the Proud Boys, someone who identified himself only as 'Alex' responded: 'Experts' lol Experts at what? Sucking cock Y'all can go fuck yourselves!' The East Tennessee Chapter, perhaps mistaking my name for a woman's, replied by saying, 'We're going to request some nudes in order to confirm your identity 👌.'
The Proud Boys have not disappeared. They have been spotted at a 'Tesla Takedown' event in Salem, Oregon; marched with anti-abortion activists in San Francisco; and confronted protesters outside of the 'Alligator Alcatraz' ICE facility. Other right-wing groups have been more active. After the Texas floods last month, a leader of the Patriot Front claimed that the extremist group was involved in recovery efforts to help ' European peoples.' Patriot Front, which has also held several marches across the country since the start of Trump's second term, remains a small organization. Estimates put its membership at 200 to 300 people, compared with the thousands that researchers believe are, or at least were, in the Proud Boys. On the whole, militia groups are 'keeping it low-key,' Amy Cooter, the deputy director and a co-founder of the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism, told me. Since the start of the year, ACLED has recorded 108 extremist protests nationwide—not even half as many as at this point in 2022. This is not entirely unexpected. As my colleague Adrienne LaFrance has reported, in the 1990s, a surge of militia activity and white nationalism appeared to die down after the Oklahoma City bombing—but those movements never disappeared; they simply moved underground.
Today, part of the reason for the apparent decline is that even after Trump's pardons, far-right groups are still dealing with the hangover of January 6. Militia groups have always been relatively splintered, but the insurrection exacerbated the fissures. Some Oath Keeper groups are divided on whether their leader, Stewart Rhodes, went too far on January 6, when he rallied Oath Keepers to breach the Capitol, Cooter said. Some members have been vocal about leaving the organization, citing Rhodes's leadership. In 2022, the Southern Poverty Law Center recorded five active Oath Keepers chapters, down from 70 in 2020. (The number of current chapters is not clear.)
Meanwhile, the Proud Boys fractured in 2021, after Reuters uncovered court records indicating that Tarrio had served as an informant to local and federal law enforcement before the group was founded. ('I don't recall any of this,' Tarrio told Reuters at the time.) Many Proud Boys chapters disavowed him, including part of his own in Miami. The city 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 received an unattributed reply expressing disappointment that Tarrio had 'turned his back and squealed on brothers.' I reached back out this week, and received a similar response: 'Tarrio is a rat, punk, and low life!' The respondent also said this: 'You breland, are exactly what President Trump said. .fake news! I'm sure you preferred the last potatoe!' (I asked if by 'the last potato,' the account meant Joe Biden. 'Ahhh yes. .SMH,' the respondent said. 'You know. .the illegitimate one! The stolen election one! The one who wandered around aimlessly!')
The bigger reason that these far-right groups remain underground is that the Trump administration's aggressive agenda has left them with little to do. One of the motivating issues for the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other extremist groups is strong opposition to undocumented immigrants. After the presidential election, a leader of the Texas chapter of the Three Percenters, a militia group, reportedly wrote to Trump to offer manpower in enacting mass deportations. But ICE and other federal agencies are engaging in forceful action against immigrants backed by the state in a way that surpasses what the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys could ever do. ICE agents, not far-right militias, are the ones who have smashed through car windows, thrown people into unmarked vans, and detained them indefinitely.
Even apart from immigration, 'groups are taking a hands-off approach right now because their interests are often aligned with the government,' Freddy Cruz, a researcher at the Western States Center, a nonprofit that tracks extremism, told me. The Proud Boys was started in 2016 in part to double down on traditional gender norms. Gavin McInnes, the group's founder, has described the Proud Boys as a 'pro-Western fraternity' for men who 'long for the days when girls were girls and men were men.' The Proud Boys' extreme pro-male views are less distinct than they once were, as MAGA has embraced Andrew Tate and other openly misogynistic figures of the so-called manosphere. As a result, the Proud Boys have one less point to rally around.
Still, the Proud Boys and other right-wing militias might not stay underground forever. Under the right conditions, they could surge once again. 'These groups are really responsive to news cycles,' Cooter said. They have specific flash points—immigration, the Second Amendment, and supposed 'election integrity'—that can mobilize them in certain contexts, she explained. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other established far-right groups still have infrastructure, a durable brand name, and the precedent that Trump might pardon them if things go awry. In May, Tarrio was reportedly invited to Mar-a-Lago, where he briefly spoke with Trump. Newer groups continue to organize. Patriot Front, for example, has teamed up with 'Active Clubs,' a loose network of white supremacists and neo-Nazis who run their own mixed-martial-arts fight clubs. Together, all of this could help give extremist groups a head start that they didn't have in the first Trump administration, when the Proud Boys and many other militia groups began to find their footing. The pieces are there, even if the moment isn't yet.