The social media channels of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are portraying the United States as a nation under siege. A recent recruitment video urged viewers to join Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), claiming that under the current administration, the nation has “reclaimed our border, secured our nation, and have begun to deport these foreign invaders.” The video added that “equally important as the task of securing our borders is the task of defending our culture – and what it means to be an American.”
This video is part of a wider advertising blitz aimed at building public support for current immigration policies and recruiting new agents. While the stated mission of DHS includes law enforcement and immigration, its campaign’s focus on protecting American culture has drawn sharp criticism. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch Project has accused the agency of promoting a white, Christian nationalist agenda.
The agency’s Instagram account, which has nearly half a million followers, features a mix of pop culture memes, action-film-style videos of ICE raids, and romanticized paintings of westward expansion that depict Native Americans receding into the shadows. The feed also includes numerous reimaged, vintage-style World War II posters, some featuring Uncle Sam calling on Americans to join ICE.
According to graphic novelist Julio Anta, the vintage aesthetic is intentional, evoking “the good old days of America, back when America was great.” The World War II themes, he argues, are a call to arms, “trying to inspire this newer generation to see this fight against immigrants as something in line with the greatest generation.”
This style of anti-immigrant illustration has a long history in the U.S. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, editorial cartoons frequently attacked Irish, Italian, Chinese, and Jewish immigrants. One infamous cartoon depicted Uncle Sam angrily hovering over a melting pot with the caption, “we can’t digest the scum.”
Anta observes that the artwork on DHS’s social media almost exclusively features white Americans in a romanticized past. The son of Cuban and Colombian immigrants, Anta says the rhetoric, coupled with mass arrests of undocumented immigrants, has made him feel unsafe as a Latino man. He now carries a picture of his passport in case he is stopped. He is particularly taken aback by a recruitment ad that asserts, “we know what it means to be an American. Everyone knows what an American is.”
“I was raised to see America as this place that was made up of immigrants, and that the cultures that we all brought made this country a better place,” Anta says. “And now we don’t even get that.”
While recent polls indicate that a majority of Hispanic voters disapprove of the administration’s immigration policies, a significant portion remain supportive. Among them is Peter Gonzalez, a 66-year-old resident of Tallahassee, Florida. The son of Cuban immigrants who arrived legally, Gonzalez voted for President Trump primarily to see illegal immigration controlled.
“I have no problem with immigrants coming into this country,” says Gonzalez, a retired Coast Guardsman. “But there’s a process, there’s procedures, there’s background checks.” He insists the DHS rhetoric is about enforcing the law, not about race. “I don’t feel targeted. I mean, everybody knows my last name. They know that I’m bilingual. I don’t feel that the administration is targeting Latinos.”
Though a supporter of the immigration enforcement campaign, Gonzalez had not seen the DHS Instagram posts before being interviewed. As he scrolled through them, his discomfort grew. “Protect your homeland, defend your culture,” he read aloud. “I’m ok with ‘protect your homeland,’ meaning illegal criminals coming in. But the second part… ‘Defend your culture’? I don’t agree with that. American culture is all cultures.”
While Gonzalez still supports the administration’s immigration crackdown, he finds the messaging confusing. For Anta, however, the message is unambiguous. He says he does not feel included in the assertion that “everyone knows what an American is.”
“I think when the majority of people see me or my family, it’s not that white mono culture they’re trying to portray,” he says. Anta wonders what would happen if the statement were inverted. “‘We know an American when we see them,’ that could be an extremely empowering statement: that an American can be anyone, of any race, of any culture.” But as it is written now, he says, “it puts a target on our backs.”
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