A newly uncovered police bulletin warns that white supremacists may interpret ICE social media content as a call to violence.
Originally published in The Intercept.
Colorado law enforcement officials warned their counterparts across the country that social media posts by the Department of Homeland Security recruiting for ICE contained so many white supremacist themes that they could endanger the public, according to internal records obtained by The Intercept.
The Colorado Information Analysis Center cautioned in a March bulletin that “violent extremists” might perceive “White Supremacy Ideology in ICE Recruitment Materials, Leading to a Potentially Increased Threat Environment.”
The bulletin from an agency tasked with preventing terrorism advised law enforcement offices throughout the United States that these posts could create a “permissive environment to engage in vigilante action and/or violence against individuals perceived to be immigrants.”
These DHS posts, the analysts warned, could convince “white supremacist violent extremists to attempt to join or infiltrate ICE and engage in bias motivated violence, endangering the public, other ICE personnel, and local law enforcement.”
The bulletin circulated following months of inflammatory social media posts by the Department of Homeland Security intended to drive ICE recruitment and promote the Trump administration’s agenda of violent mass deportation.
Colorado officials singled out tweets mimicking memes popular in right-wing online subcultures, referencing the rhetoric, lyrics and tropes commonly used by violent white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the Third Reich. The social media campaign drew widespread criticism, with groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center alleging that DHS “is using white nationalist imagery and language to recruit new employees and arrest immigrants.” DHS has defended its online tactics as “bold and effective.”
The bulletin originated from a Colorado fusion center, part of a network of information clearinghouses for local, state and federal police that spread across the U.S. following 9/11. Originally conceived as a counter-terror measure, fusion centers have evolved into a sprawling surveillance apparatus tracking everything from drugs and shoplifting to student protests despite little evidence of their efficacy as a terror-fighting tool.
Reports from fusion centers are widely circulated among law enforcement agencies nationwide. The bulletin from the Colorado fusion center is notable in that it is the first indication that state officials in the U.S. counter-terrorism establishment are concerned about the messaging of DHS under Trump.
“The fact that you have the fusion center putting out a warning for law enforcement offices based on DHS messaging is surprising, even if it seems appropriate,” said Claire Trickler-McNulty, who spent eight years as an ICE official both under Obama and Biden and during Trump’s first administration.
She described the evidence presented in the bulletin as “rather damning.”
ICE and DHS did not respond to requests for comment.
Do you have information about fusion centers? Contact the authors on Signal at sledge.41 and sambiddle.99.
The posts highlighted in the report were crafted under former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was fired in March and replaced by Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin. Noem was preceded in her departure by combative DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, who oversaw the agency’s social media push.
“The lyrics feature lines about reclaiming ‘our home’ by ‘blood or sweat,’ language often used in white supremacist rhetoric.”
The bulletin delved deep into DHS and social media posts, which the report noted have been eagerly reposted by White supremacists from Austria to the U.S.
A January 9 DHS post on X, for instance, included an image of a lone man on horseback with the caption, “We’ll have our home again.” It might look like a piece of romanticized frontier nostalgia to many, but some would recognize the phrase “is a lyric from a song popular within and adopted by white nationalist organizations,” the memo reads. “The lyrics feature lines about reclaiming ‘our home’ by ‘blood or sweat,’ language often used in white supremacist rhetoric.” The memo noted that “Members of the white nationalist group, Patriot Front, have been recorded chanting ‘By God, we’ll have our home,’ the song’s refrain,” and that “Lyrics from the song opened the manifesto of a white supremacist who killed three people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida in 2023.”
The bulletin included a DHS post on X, left, and a white nationalist post, right, that both state, “We'll have our home again.” Screenshots: Colorado Information Analysis Center
After The Intercept reported on DHS’ use of the song “We’ll Have Our Home Again” by Pine Tree Riots, lawmakers urged Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, to stop running the ad.
DHS’ quotation of a song known to be popular among neo-Nazis is part of a pattern, the report says, of “repeated use of visual or rhetorical elements that overlap with symbols historically referenced within extremist subcultures.” The memo highlights the frequent use of the term “remigration” by the Department of Homeland Security, a term the Colorado law enforcement analysts explained “dates back to 1930s Germany,” where it was used to advocate for forced expulsion of Jews.
It points out Homeland Security’s use of the “Moon Man” meme, a character from a 1980s McDonald’s advertising campaign that has become popular among online racists for its resemblance to a Ku Klux Klansman. The bulletin highlighted one social media user who replied to a DHS post using the “Moon Man” character, stating “it’s TND time” — an abbreviation for the phrase “total n***** death,” which has spread among white supremacists. This user attached his own version of the meme showing the character posing before a swastika flag with a rifle.
The bulletin compared an image from a DHS video, left, with an image circulated on social media showing a person in a “Moon Man” meme mask standing in front of a swastika. Screenshots: Colorado Information Analysis Center
“I appreciate them putting it together and so clearly laying out the dangers of using this white nationalist imagery,” Trickler-McNulty said.
The report includes a disclaimer noting that it doesn’t intend “to imply ideological alignment between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and white supremacist ideology.” But the analysts show how the social posts were quickly gaining traction among white supremacists, who were encouraging each other to sign up as immigration agents.
“During the timeframe that these posts from DHS have circulated online,” the intelligence bulletin warns, “white supremacist violent extremist groups have been simultaneously advocating for their followers to join ICE and/or musing about the potential for ICE to turn into a white supremacist militia.”
Posts from the Department of Homeland Security and the White House, at the top, could be interpreted as references to white supremacist memes included below, the Colorado analysts cautioned. Screenshots: Colorado Information Analysis Center
In a “neo-Nazi accelerationist social media channel,” for instance, internet users talked about infiltrating ICE and using its authority to form a “breakaway militia,” auguring a nationwide race war. Users on a neo-Nazi message board, the bulletin says, “discussed the advantages of joining ICE, viewing it as an opportunity for ‘accelerating conflict in the US’ and ‘beating up race traitors.’ One user claimed that someone in the network had already been a captain at an ICE-contracted detention facility.”
A spokesperson for the Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, which oversees the fusion center, did not answer when asked whether the agency had received a response from DHS about its bulletin. The fusion center spreads information to “private sector, local, tribal, and federal organizations,” spokesperson Micki Trost said in an email statement. “Bulletins help us share information with this network to meet our mission.”
The bulletin also argues that DHS’ posts could provoke violence against law enforcement from those who oppose white supremacists. Antifascist activists might “misinterpret DHS messaging and perceive all ICE personnel, and by extension law enforcement and government officials, as supportive of or complicit in white supremacy, therefore creating perceived justification for violence targeting those individuals,” the report says.
Spencer Reynolds, a former DHS official who advised the department on intelligence collection, domestic terrorism and other national security issues, rejected this warning that law enforcement might find itself at risk. “The intelligence report’s conclusion that DHS’s rhetoric may push both ‘anti-fascists’ and white supremacists to violence presents a false equivalency that ignores historical and present-day facts,” Reynolds, now senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told The Intercept.
“From this country’s founding to today’s crisis, Black people and other people of color have always been victims of white supremacist violence. It is deeply flawed of the bulletin to suggest that ‘both sides’ are likely to resort to violence due to the administration’s inflammatory rhetoric,” he said. “In reality, white supremacy, not the people who adamantly oppose it, has fomented mass violence and oppression throughout our country’s existence.”
Matt Sledge is a political reporter. He has written previously for the Houston Landing, Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate, and HuffPost.
Sam Biddle is a technology reporter focusing on issues of surveillance, privacy, and corporate power. He was previously a senior writer at Gawker, and his work has also appeared in GQ, Vice, and the New York Times magazine, among other outlets.
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