ICE Hires DHS Official Micah Bock Despite Past Sexual Misconduct Allegations Involving Capitol Hill Intern

On October 19, Micah Bock announced he had been moved out of a role at the Department of Homeland Security and into a senior position at Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

ICE's new Deputy Chief of Staff and assistant comms director — who faced sexual misconduct allegation in his past — celebrated his new job by immediately posting far right dog whistles on social media.

Bock was formerly the comms director for former Rep. Madison Cawthorn. In 2021, Buzzfeed published a story investigating the sexual assault allegations against the controversial Republican from his time at Patrick Henry College in Virginia. The story also included a disturbing allegation against Bock, who was Cawthorn's college friend before he landed a job on his congressional campaign.

Bock is accused by Leah Petree, then a Capitol Hill intern and now an aide in Rep. Chip Roy's office, of pressing his genitalia against her despite numerous clear denials as she tried to sleep at a 2016 house party.

"I could feel, like, hard genitalia. It was that level of, like, I could feel him pressed into me and just being like, no,” she recalled.

Petree told Buzzfeed that the following morning, Bock texted her, “You definitely weren't really asleep. You wanted it." Bock later insisted to Petree's boyfriend at the time that she was "asking for it."

Petree told her mother, Rebecca Powell, about the incident months later.

Powell accosted Bock in 2018 at Patrick Henry's men's dorms.

She recalled telling him, "'Who do you think you are touching my daughter this way? You can’t sexually harass my daughter.'"

“I was pushing him around the room with my presence. Trying to make him feel like he made my daughter feel,” she said.

Powell said Bock told her that it had been a misunderstanding. Bock texted Buzzfeed and called the allegation "completely untrue."

The story resurfaced online as news of Bock's high-profile new gig spread. He has not offered new comment on the allegations against him.

His post celebrating his new job has raised allegations that he is espousing far-right, "Great Replacement" conspiracy theories.

"It has been the honor of a lifetime to serve President Trump at @DHSgov," he wrote. "Remigration is the decisive battle of our time, and represents the only means of securing the longevity of this Republic and the continuity of the people and civilization that built it. The work continues at @ICEgov."

"Remigration" is a term commonly used by far-right proponents of removing African, Latino and Middle Eastern immigrants from European countries. For example, it is commonly used by Elon Musk in posts denigrating immigrants in England and France.

The New York Times described the term in July.

"'Remigration' is the call, from far-right European political parties, to forcibly remove nonwhite citizens to their supposed countries of origin, regardless of whether they are immigrants or native-born," writer Jamelle Bouie wrote. "It is essentially a form of ethnic cleansing and it is envisioned as a response to the supposed 'Great Replacement' of white Europeans with nonwhites, an idea originating from a different work of far-right fiction, 'The Camp of the Saints,' published in 1973."

A commenter below Bock's post, screenshotting the allegations against him published in Buzzfeed, summed up their feelings on his hire thusly:

"One thing worse than a N--- is a s---offending N---."