Federal immigration authorities are adopting Uncle Sam to muster the internal national police for a kind of reverse invasion, in which a domestic army is needed to reclaim the country.
On the one hand, the state of Minnesota and the Twin Citiesare suingto stop “a federal invasion” of immigration agents.
On the other hand, federal immigration authorities are adopting Uncle Sam to muster the internal national police for a kind of reverse invasion, in which a domestic army is needed to reclaim the country.
“America has been invaded by criminals and predators,” according to the recruiting poster pinned to the top of the Department of Homeland Security account on X. “We need YOU to get them out.”
Another social media recruiting poster is in the same nostalgic vein as Uncle Sam, but it relied instead on a phrase with ties to right wing extremism.
A cowboy on horseback, like the Marlboro Man seen from afar, streaks across a mountain valley with a Stealth bomber flying above.
“We’ll have our home again,” is the only text, along with “join.ice.gov,” a website where people can learn a little bit about working at ICE. It repeats the language from the recruiting poster and adds that no college degree is required.
The wistful phrase “We’ll have our home again” seems likely to appeal to the far right, as it seems to suggest the replacement theory promoted by people such as formerDOGE chief Elon Muskand also by White supremacist groups.
Even before the DHS post, that phrase was cited as having ties to White nationalist groups in the US and Canada in a database of symbols maintained by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.
Wendy Via, the CEO and co-founder of GPAHE, sent multiple examples from the social media platform Telegram of accounts associated with the Proud Boys using that wording. They frequently cite a folk song by the same name. Now that DHS is using the term, the accounts of right-wing groups are amplifying the official US government posts.
TheWashington Postrecently reported on a DHS plan to turbocharge its recruitment efforts with a $100 million taxpayer-funded “wartime recruitment” effort. The plan, described in a 30-page document obtained by the Post, included geotargeting people who attend certain sporting events, including NASCAR, UFC and rodeos, as well as hiring online influencers to spread the word.
DHS did not respond to requests for comment on the recruitment effort or the content of recruitment ads, but one could imagine a defense that a phrase like “We’ll have our home again” is descriptive, plain English.
“The thing with coded language is that it creates one plausible deniability, and so you don’t really know for sure if it’s intentional,” Cynthia Mills-Idriss told me. She’s the director of the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab at American University.
“And even if it’s intentional, the majority of people who look at it aren’t going to know the code,” Mills-Idriss said.
But those who do know would be likely to feel more comfortable and welcome in the government, and perhaps more likely to apply for jobs at ICE.
Replacement theory — the idea that White people are being replaced in the US (and other countries) — has been pushed in conservative media as well as by figures such as Musk.
When The New York Times pointed out to Trump that the only refugees currently being allowed in the US are White Afrikaners from South Africa and asked if he was trying to make the country “whiter,”Trump said this:
But when Trump talks about stripping citizenship from Somali Americans or rescindstemporary protectedstatus for migrants from other non-White majority countries, it’s music to the ears of replacement theory adherents.
So is the official adoption by the US government of the term “remigration.”
The term is descriptive, since sending migrants away from the US is obviously the policy of Trump’s White House as it pursues mass deportations and encourages immigrants to self-deport. But the term also borrows from white nationalists in Europe. It has roots in Nazi ideology and refers to ethnic cleansing, as CNN’s Chelsea Baileywrote last yearwhen DHS used the term on social media.
The US State Department is creating an “Office of Remigration” for immigration issues.
Via said it’s important to track how these ideas spread not only across the US, but also across other countries. That’s particularly the case with a concept like remigration, which originated in Europe, but has been adopted by the Trump administration.
“It has become normalized, it’s commonplace, and it is a plan for ethnic cleansing,” she said.
There are plenty of examples of posts certain to appeal to White nationalists from other government agencies, like the Department of Labor, which posted a video with a statue of George Washington and encouraging Americans to “Remember who you are,” with the tagline: “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage.” Other historical images in the video do not exactly commemorate the Civil Rights era.
Not exactly subtle. The “one heritage” being pushed by the Trump administration, critics say, is not that of immigrants from the past 100 years or those from non-European backgrounds.
“People who care are able to see the pattern. It’s not a one-off. It is a concerted effort to create these type of recruitment ads,” Via told me.