By
In an effort to recruit Americans to use a tip line to aid its authoritarian crackdown on immigrants, the Department of Homeland Security this week promoted propaganda that white supremacist social media accounts claim to have generated.
As Donald Trump and his administration pursue their anti-immigrant raids in California, DHS’ X account shared an image Wednesday that featured an illustration of Uncle Sam alongside text encouraging Americans to “report all foreign invaders to ICE.” DHS’ post was also retweeted by White House deputy chief of staff Steven Miller, who has previously promoted white supremacist views, including circulating articles from white nationalist websites to a reporter at Breitbart prior to Miller’s first role in the White House.
Nashville-based investigative reporter Phil Williams, who’s well-known for his reporting on extremism, identified a post on X from Christian nationalist influencer C. Jay Engel, who claimed the image originated from his account.
Williams went on to link to his past reporting on Engel, whose white nationalist beliefs include a vision of America that, in Engel’s words, “affirms the domination and pre-eminence of European derived peoples, their institutions and their way of life.” In another post, flagged by journalist David Bernstein, Engel says he got the image from X account “mrrobertwp,” which boasts a social media feed rife with racist propaganda, such as suggesting the Civil Rights Act is unconstitutional and reposting statements like “racism is cool and normal.” Independent journalist Tim Burke also noted that the pair apparently sourced the image from a World War II–era war bonds poster.
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately return MSNBC’s request for comment on the image.
In reality, there is no “foreign invasion” underway in the United States, nor is there any evidence one is imminent, despite the Trump administration’s best efforts to convince Americans otherwise. But the propaganda aligns with some of the bigoted imagery Trump and his administration have deployed to target immigrants — and with Trump’s history of promoting racist propaganda that hearkens back to xenophobic imagery popularized by the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century.
This incident is like a Russian nesting doll of racist propaganda that shows how social media can enlarge the audience for extremism. This situation also provides fresh evidence to support claims that white nationalist ideology is helping to fuel the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda.