About a week ago, Chad Dumas received an unusual phone call at Mojo Pizza N’ Pub, where he works as a prep cook.
Would the restaurant like 100 free pizza boxes as part of a Border Patrol campaign?
“I do like free, and free is always good at any pizza place,” he said. “We can always use extra boxes.”
But Dumas, 52, didn’t realize the full extent of what was being promoted until the boxes arrived the following day.
They were emblazoned with a large color ad recruiting to fill jobs at U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The ads tout the agency as a “Career that Delivers” and offer $30,000 in potential hiring incentives.
Credit: Gray Mollenkamp
Credit: Gray Mollenkamp
A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said it’s part of a larger campaign to boost hiring.
But the pizza boxes had landed in the Oakhurst neighborhood, one of the most progressive enclaves of Decatur. It’s an area where the Trump administration’s immigration policies aren’t popular.
The agency contracted MarCom Group, an advertising firm in Virginia, which then subcontracted with Encompass Media Group, a New York-based marketing agency that specializes in pizza box advertising.
“CBP’s marketing and advertising vendor, MarCom Group, initiated a campaign in Atlanta to coincide with the largest gathering of America’s future skilled workforce event,” a CBP spokesperson said, referring to a SkillsUSA event, which is bringing 17,500 “career-ready leaders” to the city from June 23 to 27.
“This campaign included marketing and advertising at the airport as well as advertising on pizza boxes.”
Les Kodlick, the chief communications officer at MarCom Group, said the advertising firm was proud to assist CBP in finding “highly qualified candidates to serve the American people, secure the nation’s borders, and facilitate legitimate trade and travel.”
But employees at Mojo Pizza want no part in that recruitment effort.
“I don’t want it in my restaurant that I work for,” said Dumas, who started at Mojo’s in 2015.
“I live in one of the most liberal cities in Atlanta. And I don’t want that to go out. It’s propaganda.”
Credit: Gray Mollenkamp
Credit: Gray Mollenkamp
The campaign comes just a month after the U.S. House passed a reconciliation bill allocating $6.2 billion to recruit new employees to the agency. The bill, now under consideration in the Senate, aims to curb workforce shortages and support stricter immigration policies.
A 2024 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found CBP failed to meet hiring goals in recent years. Between fiscal years 2018 and 2024, only 2.5% of CBP applicants completed the hiring process, the report said.
Justin Cammer, another employee at Mojo Pizza, was returning from a delivery when he came across the boxes and the disturbed reactions of his coworkers.
Credit: Gray Mollenkamp
Credit: Gray Mollenkamp
“I walked through the back door, and they were all freaking out,” he said.
Attached to the boxes was a letter from EMG explaining the campaign. Cammer, 39, decided to call the listed number.
“This lady answered the phone,” Cammer said. “I told her, ‘I’m calling because we got some pizza boxes, and I have some questions.’”
“She said something to the effect of, ‘Are you going to use the pizza boxes? We could come and pick them back up.’ And I said, ‘We’ll use them, all right. We’ll use them in a bonfire.’”
The staff burned all but a few boxes at an employee’s nearby home last week.
Credit: April Adams
Credit: April Adams
It isn’t clear how widespread the Border Patrol pizza box recruitment effort was.
But EMG’s campaigns have reached 50,000 restaurants and pizzerias over the last 20 years. Don Winter, CEO of the agency, emphasized pizza box advertising as an effective form of marketing.
“You’re getting inundated with millions of ads, and you’re scrolling through millions of ads. And here’s a pizza box that literally gets directly into your home on a product that’s fairly large,” Winter said.
“That’s going to wind up on your kitchen table or your living room. And you’re not going to change the channel or be able to turn it off,” he said.
Winter did not respond to additional questions about the CBP campaign but said more restaurants agreed to participate than declined.
Still, Cammer was left questioning why his restaurant was targeted.
“This place is a one-off,” he said while lighting a cigarette. “We’ve been here for 27 years, and we’re not trying to franchise at all. It’s a small neighborhood pizza place.”
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