As an immigration crackdown intensifies in Minneapolis, the Trump administration is leaning into borrowing phrases, images and music about national identity popular among right-wing groups to send its message.
Two days after tensions in Minneapolis reached a fever pitch after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot and killed Renee Goode on Jan. 9, the Department of Homeland Security posted a photo on social media of a man riding a horse through snowy mountains with the words “We will have our home again.” It’s the refrain of a song about deporting foreign presences by a self-described “folk punk” band that has been used by the Proud Boys and other far-right and white supremacist groups.
The next day, the Labor Department posted on
Last week, as President Donald Trump stepped up pressure on Greenland’s sovereignty, the White House posted an image on the Above the picture it says “Which way, Greenlanders?”
The article cited a meme that parodied the title of a notorious white supremacist book called “Which Way, Westerner?” The government had already used the frame in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement recruiting post last year, which asked, “Which Way, Yankees?”
The flurry of posts has reignited criticism of a recurring pattern during Trump’s second term — the sometimes veiled use of imagery popular with the far right and white supremacists in the administration’s campaign to unite the country behind an immigration crackdown and cast it as a battle to protect Western civilization.
Government tells critics to ‘get a grip’
The government says it is tired of criticism that its messaging revolves around white supremacy or Nazi slogans.
“The mainstream media seems to have become a meme of their own: The crazy leftists who claim everything they don’t like must be Nazi propaganda,” White House Press Secretary Abigail Jackson said. “This line of attack is boring and tired. Get a grip.”
Referring to the “We Will Have Our Home Again” post, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said it “is a reference to the more than 20 million illegal aliens invading the country.”
“I don’t know where you get this stuff from,” she added, “but this is ridiculous.”
Cesar Cuahtemoc Garcia Hernandez, a law professor at Ohio State University, said government references are one option.
“You don’t have to resort to white supremacist slogans to promote immigration regulation,” he said, noting that former President Bill Clinton signed two bills to strengthen penalties for immigrants who entered the United States illegally in the 1990s but did not do so.
He added that the government appeared to be adjusting its references.
“These images are not just reproductions of common white supremacist images or text, but a play on those images — which gives them the breathing space they want,” Garcia-Hernandez said.
Trump won a second term with strong support from Latino voters and increased support among black and Asian voters while promising tough border enforcement and mass deportations.
Still, Trump has stoked passions over the years among white supremacist groups who see his nationalist and anti-immigrant stance as validating their own.
The president complained that immigrants “are poisoning the blood of our country” and he praised white immigrants compared to other immigrants. During his first term, he bemoaned the number of immigrants coming from what he called “junk countries” like Haiti or Africa, while wondering why the United States wasn’t attracting more immigrants from Norway. Last month, he called Somali immigrants “trash.”
Trump changed immigration policy to favor whites in one area and banned the admission of refugees other than white South Africans. He claimed there was evidence that white South Africans were being discriminated against in their home country.
Online appeals to far-right elements
Some of Trump’s most prominent supporters have openly supported the cause of white nationalists.
Elon Musk, the biggest donor to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and who ran the president’s Department of Government Effectiveness for the first half of last year, retweeted a user post on X, a social platform he owns, calling for “white unity” to prevent the mass murder of white people, adding a “100” emoji in agreement.
The government’s history has led to claims that it uses white supremacist language, even when there is no evidence to prove it.
After the shooting in Goode, Minnesota, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem drew widespread attention on social media when a sign that read “Ours, Yours” appeared at the podium at a news conference, with many commentators believing it was a Nazi phrase. However, the Southern Poverty Law Center was unable to trace the quote to any Nazi slogan.
McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said that was referring to the subject of the press conference: “A CBP officer who was shot and killed — one of our officers and all federal law enforcement officials across the country,” she wrote in an email.
Hannah Gais, a senior fellow at the SPLC, has long tracked white supremacist groups and said she believes the government knows what its messaging is doing.
“They know their base is this hyper-online right-winger, and they know they’re going to go crazy if they say ‘Which way, Westerners?'” Geiss said. “I don’t think that’s a viable strategy in the long term because these things are incomprehensible to most people. Even if it was understandable, people wouldn’t like it.”