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The Department of Homeland Security, a once critical arm of the federal government designed to protect the U.S. from terrorist attacks in the aftermath of 9/11, is now in the business of doing the terrorizing. Even during the holiday season, DHS is carrying out its extremist mission with a distinct measure of glee these days, with memes and imagery that feel borrowed from white nationalist and neo-Nazi web sites, and even some of the darkest Hitler-era propaganda of the early 20th century. No, we’ve not reached that particular hell on earth. But you can see some of it from here.

Witness the latest exploits from the X account run by DHS staffers who seem to delight in celebrating the department’s heinous operations of chasing down non-criminal migrants at home and at work, often ripping apart families on the spot, while occasionally body-slamming women, and pepper spraying innocent children. DHS touts the work of its masked ICE agents with memes tying their heartlessness to the holidays.

“YOU’RE GOING HO HO HOME,” reads one recent DHS X post, which features images of ICE agents in Santa hats, standing next to vehicles adorned with Christmas lights.

That sickening post, which boasts nearly 10 million views, is hardly an isolated example. But it does neatly illustrate the soulless monstrosity that DHS has become. It is America’s department of homeland sadism - an agency that appears to have abandoned its origin story of protecting the public in favor of delivering cheap thrills to those who feel a sort of kinship with baby-snatching ghouls.

Another recent post on the DHS X account, see above, features a grainy 1980’s game show-inspired video offering prizes of $1000 to families that self-deport. The parents and children depicted in this unfunny government spoof are, surprise, brown-skinned. The video, which is hilarious only to the barbaric DHS public information team that produced this content, offers to take care of all of the travel arrangements. The point, of course, is not the comedy. It’s the cruelty.

The shameful DHS X feed does point to the arrests of alleged undocumented criminals who have been apprehended since Trump’s return to the White House. But these are individuals who would have been targeted for removal proceedings under any other Democratic or Republican administration. What the DHS X account conveniently avoids mentioning are the numerous news accounts, as of late, to report that ICE has largely scooped up non-violent offenders.

“We won’t apologize for posting banger memes,” a department spokeswoman told WIRED last summer in response to a piece from the magazine on DHS’s online recruitment efforts, which included images harkening back to the nation’s brutal embrace of the idea of “manifest destiny” - a period defined by western American (white) explorers violently removing indigenous tribes from their lands. WIRED piece on DHS memes

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, whose perch atop the department is reportedly tenuous, is all-in on serving as the department’s meme queen, a cosplayer-in-chief, riding horseback in skin-tight jeans in cringey images tweeted out by her team. According to the Bulwark’s excellent immigration reporter Adrian Carrasquillo, Noem may be bucked out her saddle any day now. Virginia’s outgoing governor Glenn Youngkin could be her successor. Noem on her way out?

It should be noted the department’s gaslighting goes way beyond juvenile shitposting on X. Just last month, DHS deputy assistant secretary Micah Bock, a senior department official, attempted to rewrite American history and the country’s identity by insisting in an Instagram post that the U.S. is “not a nation of immigrants.”

“We are a nation of citizens,” Bock declares in the video. See below.

DHS deputy secretary says America not a nation of immigrants

What’s next? Stripping Emma Lazarus’s poem, “The New Colossus,” from the Statue of Liberty? Don’t give Bock any ideas.

Obviously, the DHS social media propaganda machine has largely ignored the countless viral videos of women and children assaulted by ICE agents, many of which I’ve recounted on my podcast. DHS officials rarely offer any plausible explanations for the horrendous actions of ICE agents in their posts. Instead, the department leaves much of its pushback efforts to softball interviews offered up on Fox.

In reality, the memes are the department’s response. Trump wants America to do more than just tolerate or even support his mass deportation atrocities. Like all of human history’s worst demagogues, he wants you to enjoy the show. In other words, the meme is the message.

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