The Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Labor, and the White House posted social media content in January that drew criticism for borrowing phrases, images, and music tied to far-right and white nationalist movements, as the Trump administration intensified its immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis. The administration said the posts were misread; critics and researchers said the references were deliberate.
The posts are part of what analysts describe as a recurring pattern in the Trump administration’s communications — the use of imagery and phrases familiar to far-right and white supremacist online communities while maintaining plausible deniability with mainstream audiences, as the administration frames its immigration enforcement campaign as a defense of Western civilization.
The posts
On Jan. 9, DHS posted an image of a man on horseback in a snowy, mountainous landscape bearing the words “We’ll have our home again.” That is the chorus to a song about ousting a foreign presence by a self-described “folk-punk” band that the Proud Boys and other far-right and white supremacist groups have used, according to the Associated Press. The post came two days after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis, sharply raising tensions in the city.
The following day, the Department of Labor posted on X: “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage. Remember who you are, American.” Several critics on the platform drew a parallel to the Nazi slogan “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer” — “One People, One Realm, One Leader.”
The White House also posted an image related to Greenland showing a dog sled at a fork in a trail, one path toward an American flag and the White House and the other toward Russian and Chinese flags. Above the image was the phrase “Which Way, Greenland Man?” The post references a meme that riffs on the title of a white supremacist book, “Which Way Western Man?” ICE had previously used similar framing in a recruiting post asking “Which Way, American Man?”
Administration response
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson dismissed the criticism. “It seems that the mainstream media has become a meme of their own: The deranged leftist who claims everything they dislike must be Nazi propaganda,” Jackson said. “This line of attack is boring and tired. Get a grip.”
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said the “We’ll Have Our Home Again” post “was a reference to 20-plus million illegal aliens invading the country.” She added: “I don’t know where you guys are getting this stuff, but it is absurd.”
A separate image — a sign reading “One Of Ours, All Of Yours” that appeared on Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s lectern during a news conference — also drew social media attention, with commentators suggesting it was a Nazi phrase. The Southern Poverty Law Center said it could not trace the words to any Nazi slogan. McLaughlin said the sign referenced a CBP officer who had been shot, describing him as “one of our officers and all of the country’s federal law enforcement officer.”
Expert analysis
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University, said the administration’s use of such references is a deliberate choice. “You don’t have to dip into white supremacist sloganeering to promote immigration regulation,” he said, noting that former President Bill Clinton signed two bills in the 1990s toughening penalties on immigrants in the country illegally without comparable framing.
García Hernández said the references appear calibrated. “The imagery is not simply a reproduction of common white supremacist imagery or text, but a play on that imagery — and that gives them the breathing room they want,” he said.
Hannah Gais, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center who has long tracked white supremacist groups, said the administration is targeting a specific online audience with the messaging. “They know their base is this overly online right-winger who they know will go nuts if they say ‘Which Way, Western Man?’” Gais said. “I don’t think it’s a tenable strategy for the long term because the stuff is incomprehensible to most people. And if it is comprehensible, people don’t like it.”
Broader pattern
The AP described the flurry of posts as renewing criticism about a recurring pattern in Trump’s second term. Trump has previously said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and spoken favorably about white immigrants compared to those from what he called “shithole countries” in Africa and Haiti, while asking why the United States does not draw more immigrants from Norway. In December 2025, he called Somali immigrants “garbage.”
The administration changed refugee admission policy to allow white South Africans while shutting down admissions for most other refugee groups. Trump justified the change by claiming, against available evidence, that white South Africans face discrimination in their home country.
Elon Musk, who was Trump’s largest donor during the 2024 presidential campaign and ran the Department of Government Efficiency for the first part of 2025, added a “100” emoji to a user post on X, the social platform he owns, that called for “white solidarity” to prevent the mass murder of white men.
Trump won his second term with increased support among Latino, Black, and Asian voters compared to his first presidential run, even as white nationalist groups have publicly expressed enthusiasm for his nationalist and anti-immigrant policies.