At What Point Do We Admit This Isn't Immigration Enforcement, But Racial Enforcement?
How ICE moved from enforcing immigration law to deciding which people belong in America and which people do not…
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
When Joe Rogan starts referring to the Trump regime as if they're Nazis, you know ICE and the GOP have a problem. Yesterday, he said:
"Are we really going to be the Gestapo? Where's your papers? Is that what we've come to?"
At the end of this month, funding for the Department of Homeland Security runs out. Congress is going to have to act and that makes this a very important moment, politically.
The attraction of ICE to white supremacists — and now their open appeal to racists in their recruiting messages — didn't start with George W. Bush adopting the word "Homeland" on October 8, 2001, the first time it'd been publicly used by a mainstream politician in American history. It arguably started on September 5, 1934, with a speech by Rudolf Hess, introducing Adolf Hitler at the Nurnberg Rally.
I have a weird connection to that speech, and it's always haunted me. For more than half of my life I've been a volunteer for a German-based international relief organization that was founded by Gottfried Muller, who'd been an intelligence officer in Hitler's army until he was captured in Iran and spent virtually all of WWII in a prison camp. There, he had a conversion experience and dedicated his life to helping "the least of the least of this world, as Jesus taught us."
Muller told me how he was there for that Nuremberg Rally, in which Hess introduced Hitler with the following speech:
" Danke irher Fuhrung wird Deutschland sein Zeil erreichen. Heimat zu sein. Heimat zu sein fur alle Deutschen der Welt . ("Thanks to your leadership, Germany will reach its goal: to be a homeland. A homeland to be for all Germans of the world.")
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This use of Heimat ("Homeland") was intentional on the part of Hess and Hitler. "Homeland" suggested a racial identity, as Hitler noted in Mein Kampf when he speaks of the German people as a racial organism with the German land (Boden) and hereditarily German people (Volk) inseparable:
"The German Reich must gather together and protect all the racially valuable elements of Germandom, wherever they may be." (Volume II, chapter 13)
As Herr Muller told me, Hitler wanted to create an identity that went beyond language and culture. He wanted to posit a pure "German race," and have Germany be that race's "homeland," all so he could sell to the German people their own racial superiority and use that to justify exterminating others.
Throughout American history, our leaders have avoided that type of language:
— Thomas Paine wrote: " The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind ."
— Abraham Lincoln said that our Founders had created: " a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal …"
— Woodrow Wilson used the word "democracy" instead of "homeland" during WWI: " The world must be made safe for democracy. "
— FDR simply used the name of our nation on December 7, 1941: " The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked …"
Across 220+ years, during revolution, civil war, global war, and even the attack on Pearl Harbor, American presidents systematically avoided homeland-style language that implied ancestral ownership, ethnic belonging, or insiders versus outsiders.
Instead, they used words like: republic, nation, people, citizens, democracy, and country to describe America. This wasn't accidental: it was the core distinction between American civic nationalism, and 19th century European whites-only ethno-nationalism.
George W. Bush blew that all up when he announced the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. I immediately called it out, writing more than 20 years ago that using that word would lead America in a dark direction.
And here we are.
ICE is now openly using white supremacist slogans, memes, and advertisements to recruit men who're enthusiastic about chasing down Black and brown people. As the Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch project documents:
"The increase in white nationalist content [from ICE] appears to originate with a June 11, 2025 post. That day, DHS' official X and Instagram accounts posted a graphic of Uncle Sam hammering up a sign with the caption: "Help your country … and yourself … REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS." A hotline number for ICE accompanied the post. "Mother Jones reported the doctored graphic of Uncle Sam originated from an X user called 'Mr. Robert,' who is associated with white nationalist content. Mr. Robert's bio highlights the phrase: 'Wake Up White Man.'
Since then, it's been a nonstop barrage of white nationalist and Nazi rhetoric and symbology, as compiled by Dean Blundell.
— Kristi Noem behind a podium with the words "One of ours. All of yours." Malcolm Nance noted:
"This is the order to kill all the people in the village of Lidice in Czech Republic when the sadist SS General Heydrich was ambushed and killed by the British SOE. THEY ORDERED 173 MEN MASSACRED. ALL WOMAN AND CHILDREN SENT TO AUSCHWITZ WITH THESE WORDS."
— The US Department of Labor posting an image of George Washington with the words: "One Homeland. One People. One Heritage," an eerie echo of " Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer (One People, One Nation, One Leader).
— Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino, who showed up in Minneapolis last week, photographed for the ICE/CPB website in nearly-full Nazi drag.
Others consistently feature white people with slogans or images appealing to a white supremacist or nationalist base:
As political scientist Dr. Rachel Bitecofer noted in her excellent The Cycle newsletter:
"'We'll have our home again' is the emotional core of Great Replacement ideology, the white nationalist belief system that frames demographic change as dispossession and recasts the nation as something that has been stolen and must be taken back. This is the same worldview that produced the chant 'You will not replace us' at Charlottesville. The only thing that has changed is who is now saying it. … "This ideology is not abstract. It has been articulated explicitly by mass shooters, embedded in white nationalist manifestos, and popularized by contemporary influencers who now operate openly in American political discourse. Figures like Nick Fuentes center their politics on the claim that the United States properly belongs to a single cultural and racial group, and that reclaiming it requires hierarchy, exclusion, and force."
From Hess to Bush to Trump, here we are.
One of the regular themes of callers to my radio/TV show is the question:
"Are they hiding their faces behind masks so we can't see that so many of these well-paid goons are open members of the Klan, Proud Boys, Patriot Front, Goyim Defense League, and J6ers?"
It's as good an answer for the masks as any other I can come up with. Throughout American history, the only police agency known to conceal their identities were the Klansmen in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when they were routinely deputized in the South to police segregation laws.
The police officers who murdered Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in Mississippi on June 21, 1964, for example, were all Klansmen, and that's where Don Jr. went to give a speech on "states' rights," echoing Reagan's first official speech on the same subject in the same place after he got his party's nomination in 1980.
Yesterday, Congressman Jamie Raskin sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asking if their "white nationalist 'dog whistles'" are being used in their recruitment campaigns that appear to target members of "extremist militias" like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters:
"Unique among all law enforcement agencies and all branches of the armed services, ICE agents conceal their identities, wearing masks and removing names from their uniforms. Why is that? Why do National Guard members, state, county, and local police officers, and members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines all routinely work unmasked while ICE agents work masked? "Who is hiding behind these masks? How many of them were among the violent rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6 and were convicted of their offenses? The American people deserve to know how many of these violent insurrectionists have been given guns and badges by this administration."
Racism has been one of the animating themes of Trump's three candidacies and two administrations; finally Americans and the mainstream media are waking up to it and calling it out.
We need a purge, and that begins by calling our elected officials at 202-224-3121 and telling them to vote "No" on funding DHS and ICE until there have been significant reforms.
Get rid of the masks and weapons of war. Require them to follow the law and the Constitution. No more arrests or home invasions without warrants signed by judges per the Fourth Amendment .
If America is a homeland, it's only a homeland to the surviving Native Americans who Europeans haven't entirely wiped out.
It's far past time to end this use of white ethnonationalist rhetoric, rename the Department of Homeland Security, and purge that organization — and it's ICE offspring — of their white nationalist bigots.
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In memory of Kavika...
Recommend you delete this comment - Kavika definitely would not be supportive.
K was the most human person I have known on NT. Racial discrimination was an absolute anathema to him. What this Administration, and its ICE thugs, are doing would be utterly abhorent to him.
We need moral standards... like his.
Kavika would totally support this seed. He was a patriotic American with a good, kind heart. Anyone who refutes that doesn't know a gold nugget from a moose nugget
Don't attempt to place yourself in a position of what Kavika would or would not support.
Like you are doing?
I think I knew him well enough to know what he would or not support. We had more than a few private conversations of which you were not privy to
No one knows what Kavika would think of this seed, although most of his comments for years had been more to the liberal side.
If the seeder wants to dedicate the seed to Kavika, for whatever reason, why do you care?
for some damn reason 1st seems to think Kavika was just like him. Full of rage and resentment
Kavika and I were not only good friends on NT, but privately by means of regular email as well. We collaborated on NT articles and supported each other. He would have despised what the administration is doing these days, especially ICE.
The back of my everyday jacket - earned through service.
I think that is a lovely idea, Bob
The day Trump came down the golden escalator, June 16, 2015.
Donald Trump's political career was and is entirely dependent on white grievance. This has always been painfully obvious. His political career was born in racist birtherism and it has never changed an inch since then.
Which I don't understand. He was born with a titanium spoon in his mouth. He's never wanted for anything. It's not like he grew up as a poor white man who had to work hard for everything he had. I can understand the resentment white man have for affirmative action, but that doesn't make them right.
He's never wanted for anything.
Financially, yes. Socially he wanted the same stuff his racist parents wanted.
I know they and he were vicious social climbers but trmp made it to the top. So what is his deal with white grievance? He shouldn't have any.
Although he is a racist himself, he also used the racism of the Tea Party'ers to create a political base. Trump didnt really care where Obama was born, he cared that he could use it to get to the top of the Republican Party.
His grievance is that there are non-white people in positions of influence anywhere, period. He is racist to his core.
Well, that sounds like a personal problem. One that could be solved by...fill in the blank
Trump has , more than once , suggested we need more white immigrants. His problem is that most people in "white" countries dont want to live in a place where someone like him is in charge.
The Norwegians don't want to come to America. It would be a downgrade for them
He only wants the ones who can afford the Trump Gold Card.
“Socially he wanted…”
…to be accepted. But like the grade schooler who never fit in, he only knows to lash out at everyone and everything in justifying his petty vindictiveness and boorish self-aggrandizing. A sad, lonely, little boy.
That anyone, anywhere can accept his ‘brand’ and can willfully ignore, or actively condone his actions is a truly disgusting, hateful, and frightening actor in this tragedy.
Donald Trump actually has more in common with Joseph Stalin than Adolf Hitler. Trump's actions toward immigrants follows Stalin's model and not Hitler's, Trump's militarization of law enforcement against the people has precedents in communist states.
Donald Trump is doing more to create a soviet state than is Vladimir Putin.
Joe Rogan caught on, so when is the rest of MAGA going to realize and admit the con?
There are hours of video of illegals coming across the border in various places illegally.
Can you show us videos of large groups of predominately white people crossing illegally?
WTF??
Part of the last thread and this whole thread were removed for no value and taunting.