War Propaganda Without a War

While ICE agents are busy racially profiling and disappearing Americans, the social media interns at the DHS are hard at work ginning up support from the MAGA faithful.

Their Twitter feed is a perpetual fever dream of mugshots, "fact checks", and dehumanizing rhetoric. The throughline that connects it all, however, is pure, unvarnished white nationalism. The clearest examples of this are the graphics and videos they post.

Before I examine the broader political context, I've compiled a list of “highlights” from the official DHS Twitter account below. Keep in mind that they're posting this same drivel on Facebook, which has a much farther reach.

This is a recent post from Republican Representative Andy Ogles that the DHS account retweeted. If you don't remember, Ogles was one of several Republican representatives that hurled Islamophobic insults at NY Democrat Zohran Mamdani. Here, he’s encouraging his followers to “heed the call” and “deport them all”. Phrases like “DEFEND OUR PEOPLE” and “GOD AND COUNTRY” flash on the screen.

This is a lazy photoshop of a real World War I propaganda poster created by Major Thomas B. Woodburn. The original text at the bottom read “ENLIST NOW in the UNITED STATES ARMY”. Now, it reads “AMERICA NEEDS YOU. JOIN ICE NOW.”

This video features slow-motion stock footage of people walking through beautiful landscapes punctuated with the phrase “A HOMELAND WORTH PROTECTING"

This post asserts that “criminal illegal aliens represent an existential threat to the citizens of the United States”. It features a video of soldiers training in tactical gear with a Bible verse overlayed, reading “THE WICKED FLEE WHEN NO MAN PURSUETH: BUT THE RIGHTEOUS ARE BOLD AS A LION -PROVERBS 28:1."

This post is not even the first time Trump and his ilk have explicitly endorsed the concept of Manifest Destiny. For those that need a refresher, Manifest Destiny was the belief that Americans (of European descent) had a divine right to conquer and settle the entirety of the North American continent, indigenous peoples and Mexicans be damned. Growing up in the Chicagoland area, this exact painting from John Gast was used in my junior high and high school textbooks as a visual shorthand for Manifest Destiny; seeing it used as propaganda by the U.S. Government in 2025 should be alarming to anyone who believes in liberal democracy, let alone the countless countries Trump has threatened to annex.

This tweet wants us to “remember our homeland’s heritage” by appreciating a saccharine depiction of early American pioneers cradling a newborn baby.

This tweet wants us to “protect the homeland”, which is represented here by a kitchy, idealized painting of an American suburb circa 1950.

This tweet is an explicit call to action for us to “help our country locate and arrest illegal aliens”, which requires us to — as the accompanying propaganda poster puts it — “report all foreign invaders”.

The DHS interns are communicating directly to the MAGA base, not the American public at large: the carefully curated saccharine depictions of white Americans, the repetition of "homeland", the religious imagery. This toxic concoction of racial resentment and nationalism is clearly meant to provoke contempt for (non-white) undocumented immigrants.

Remember the America you imagined when you were a child? When life was simpler? That America is real, and it's under siege.

But how does this Twitter account further Trump's agenda?

He's also currently on a crusade to destroy the separation of powers because hundreds of judges across the political spectrum have blocked pieces of his agenda. A key piece of that agenda is his effort to use the Alien Enemies Act to kick his deportation machine into overdrive. His lawyers argued in court that the president alone can determine what does and does not constitute an invasion:

The determination of whether there has been an “invasion” or “predatory incursion,” whether an organization is sufficiently linked to a foreign nation or government, or whether national security interests have otherwise been engaged so as to implicate the AEA, is fundamentally a political question to be answered by the President.

J.G.G. v. Trump: Emergency Motion for a Stay Pending Appeal (March 16, 2025)

If that were true, Trump alone could declare that we're being invaded by Mexico. Or Venezuela. Or Haiti. Or any other non-white country whose refugees Trump would like to deport. He'd then have the pretext needed to enforce the Alien Enemies Act. Luckily, that legal argument was recently shot down by the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, Trump is cashing in the check he's been writing for the last decade. He can use Twitter and Facebook's megaphones to rile up and recruit those who enjoy watching "ASMR deportation flights". If he can't get the courts to sign off on his mass deportation dreams, he'll make the existing deportation apparatus as cruel and vindictive as possible.

With the firehose of cruelty and lies coming from this administration, social media posts may get lost in the noise. But it's worth documenting– and remembering – what they say when they're holding the levers of power. They won't be holding them forever.