By Sasha Abramsky<\/p>\n
This article was originally published by Truthout<\/a><\/p>\n The Department of Homeland Security is actively recruiting from the far right as it seeks to hire 10,000 ICE agents.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Under Kristi Noem, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has gone on an explicitly fascist zag as it seeks to recruit 10,000 additional U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.<\/p>\n Robert Reich<\/a> and others have detailed in recent weeks how ICE is now actively seeking to recruit extremist young men from gun shows, Ultimate Fight Club venues, rodeos, martial arts centers, and other haunts for men who tend to have a far right political vision.<\/p>\n ICE is actively employing recruiters who use right-wing social media and influencer operations to get at potential recruits. And it is explicitly targeting young men who listen to \u201cpatriotic\u201d (in other words, hard-right) podcasts. Part of ICE\u2019s \u201cwartime recruitment\u201d schtick now involves asking potential applicants if they want to repel \u201cforeign invaders\u201d \u2014 and then offering them $50,000 sign-up bonuses if they decide to join.<\/p>\n The Southern Poverty Law Center has, over the past year, researched the increasingly extreme language and imagery used in these recruitment campaigns. They include a \u201cYour Country Needs You\u201d poster of Uncle Sam, from August of last year<\/a>, in which Uncle Sam asks \u201cWhich way, American Man?\u201d One arrow points to \u201cInvasion,\u201d another to \u201cCultural Decline,\u201d while a third points toward Uncle Sam and reads \u201cHomeland.\u201d<\/p>\n Another shows a father-son combo, both with features that the Nazis would have deemed acceptably \u201cAryan,\u201d clad in body armor and holding assault rifles, with the caption \u201cNo Age Cap. Join ICE Now.\u201d<\/p>\n Still another Uncle Sam recruitment poster from the summer reads, \u201cAmerica has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out.\u201d<\/a> Other recruitment posters include a photo of a spacious family van, alongside the words \u201cWant to deport illegals with your absolute boys? Think about how many criminal illegal aliens you could fit in this bad boy!\u201d<\/p>\n Related Story<\/p>\n \n This weekend, the agency posted a phrase similar to one that appeared on Hitler propaganda posters.\n <\/p>\n A recent poster, shot from above, shows knights in armor, swords in both hands, in a circle, sword tips pointing inward, and a decal \u201cTHE ENEMIES ARE AT THE GATE. JOIN.ICE.GOV.\u201d<\/a> The agency is also using memes from popular video games<\/a> to further their recruitment efforts.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, on January 9, DHS and the White House posted a recruitment video on Instagram titled \u201cWe\u2019ll have our home again,\u201d<\/a> accompanied by a visual image of a heroic-looking cowboy riding along the base of snow-covered mountains, and the Pine Tree Riots song \u201cWe\u2019ll have our home again,\u201d<\/a> which has, according to The Intercept<\/a>, become increasingly popular within neo-Nazi subcultures.<\/p>\n The chorus to this truly appalling song is \u201cOh by God we\u2019ll have our home again\/ By God we\u2019ll have our home\/ By blood or sweat, we\u2019ll get there yet\/ By God we\u2019ll have our home.\u201d The verses lament that \u201cin our own towns, we\u2019re foreigners now\/ Our names are spat and cursed.\u201d And they decry the fate of \u201cnoble sons driven down beneath a coward\u2019s heel.\u201d Not surprisingly, these lyrics are beloved by Proud Boys<\/a> and other extremists \u2014 and now, apparently, by recruitment officers and propagandists at ICE.<\/p>\n Not to be outdone, the U.S. Department of Labor recently released on Facebook the following message: \u201cOne Homeland. One People. One Heritage. Remember who you are, American\u201d \u2014 a phrase that strongly echoed a slogan used within Nazi propaganda<\/a>.<\/p>\n In many of these instances, the visual and audio similarities to Nazi wartime messaging is stark. ICE is using World War II recruitment memes; but it has inverted their meaning, so that classic American symbols, from Uncle Sam to the Statue of Liberty, are being invoked in service of a fanatical vision of purity and oneness.<\/p>\n In the wake of the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good<\/a> in Minneapolis on January 7, the increasingly extremist agency has refused to modify its behavior or rhetoric.<\/p>\n The circumstances of Good\u2019s killing were particularly egregious: she was shot at least four times by agent Jonathan Ross, who shouted \u201cfucking bitch\u201d as he fired at her<\/a> while she was clearly trying to drive away from the protest; and her reputation was subsequently slimed by Noem, Donald Trump, JD Vance, and other high-level administration officials who all accused her, without evidence, of being a paid agitator and a domestic terrorist. Those officials then doubled down and, even before any investigation had been carried out, claimed, as Vance put it, that Ross had \u201cabsolute immunity\u201d<\/a> for his actions on the streets of Minneapolis. To protect Ross\u2019s impunity, the FBI, under the egregious leadership of Kash Patel, has refused to share evidence with state investigators.<\/a><\/p>\n As anti-ICE protests spread, if anything, its parent organization DHS is upping the ante: days after the killing of Good, the department surged an additional 1,000 agents into Minneapolis<\/a>, and the Department of Justice is moving federal prosecutors from around the Midwest into Minnesota<\/a> to faster process the prosecution of protesters.<\/p>\n None of this has been conducive to assuaging growing national anger about ICE\u2019s tactics \u2014 tactics that even MAGA luminary Joe Rogan opposes:<\/a> Rogan recently described Trump\u2019s ICE as behaving like \u201cthe Gestapo.\u201d<\/p>\n Each day since Good\u2019s killing, the protests have grown, only to be met with the deployment of masked, armed federal agents in military uniforms who have turned parts of Minneapolis into what looks like a war zone<\/a>; and last week, on the same day that ICE agents shot another Minneapolis resident<\/a>, this time non-fatally, Trump declared that he was leaning toward invoking the Insurrection Act<\/a> so as to bring in active-duty military personnel to target the protesters.<\/p>\n Trump and his anti-immigrant wingman Stephen Miller seem to want to turn urban centers of the United States into permanent war zones, akin to Belfast during the Northern Irish \u201cTroubles,\u201d or the West Bank today.<\/p>\n DHS\u2019s explicit use of neo-Nazi references and imagery to recruit new agents for its rapidly expanding ICE force is a grim warning of where we are headed.<\/p>\n The scramble to pack ICE with far right recruits and instill in them a sense of total impunity risks pushing ICE toward becoming an organization similar to the Black and Tans<\/a> in Ireland a little over a century ago \u2014 a group of British ex-soldiers who were hired by the British administration in Ireland to dole out death and torture against Irish civilians, raining down terror on public events and private homes alike in their effort to keep Ireland under the British imperial thumb.<\/p>\n As ICE deploys its forces to occupy immigrant neighborhoods of big, Democratic-run cities, its tactics resemble the way Israel polices Palestinians \u2014 ruthlessly and violently, with a nod-and-a-wink to civilian and military officers who know they will be exonerated if they shoot civilians. In both cases, the occupying police forces are quick to use baseless accusations of \u201cterrorism\u201d to justify their violence.<\/p>\n The day after Good was killed by ICE, DHS Secretary Noem spoke from a platform bedecked with the message \u201cOne of ours, all of yours,\u201d seemingly implying that, in violation both of the law and of age-old moral codes, her department endorses collective punishment.<\/p>\n This is the U.S. in 2026. If there is an afterlife, I\u2019m sure Joseph Goebbels, master propagandist of the Third Reich, is looking down and smiling, thin-lipped and cold-eyed, with approval.<\/p>\n This article<\/a> was originally published by Truthout<\/a> and is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)<\/a>. Please maintain all links and credits in accordance with our republishing guidelines<\/a>.<\/p>\n