Conor here: It’s getting increasingly difficult to separate the trolling from the policy. This appears intended to strike fear into communities of color which are largely working class. Trump—who is very fond of “guest workers” at his properties —and his fellow members of the ruling class would no doubt love a similar system for all workers. Indeed, as we’ve noted much of the administration’s deportation policy has the effect of getting rid of immigrants who don’t have their ability to stay in the country tied to their employer and replace them with guest workers whose presence is wholly dependent on their labor. I’ll leave this from Michael Macher here before we get to the main piece:
…the US immigration system runs not on the enforcement of immigration laws, but on their selective nonenforcement. Employers have relied on the state to ignore the exploitation of undocumented labor while holding the credible threat of deportation over workers. This has had the effect of strengthening employer bargaining power generally against all workers—lowering wages, weakening unions, and shifting the politics of work away from collective bargaining and wage-and-hour regulation. The interest in labor that is weak and disorganized has driven US politicians, consciously or not, to adopt the role of petty bosses, threatening the deportation of significant portions of the US workforce. But if Trump can afford to blow up this arrangement, it is because the precarity of the undocumented worker represents the future of labor relations in the US, not its past.
By Stephen Prager, a staff writer for Common Dreams. Cross posted from Common Dreams.
The Trump administration provoked horror this week with the suggestion that the United States could be turned into a paradise if over a quarter of the people in the country were deported.
On Wednesday, the official social media account for the Department of Homeland Security posted a piece of artwork depicting a pink late-1960s Cadillac Eldorado parked on a bright, idyllic beach. Over the clear blue sky are the words “America after 100 million deportations.”
The post was captioned by the agency: “The peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world.”
Social media users later discovered that DHS had, ironically, stolen the image from the Japanese pop artist Hiroshi Nagai without giving credit.
The peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world. pic.twitter.com/UrPiRA7X1C
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) December 31, 2025
It is hardly the first time the administration has used edgy and inflammatory social media posts to promote its agenda. But DHS has come under particular scrutiny for its style of communication, which often evokes white nationalist rhetoric and symbolism.
Posts by the agency have cheered “remigration,” a term that far-right parties in Europe have often used to describe the forced repatriation of nonwhite populations, including citizens. Other posts have referred to President Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” campaign as part of an effort to defend American “heritage” and “culture.”
The agency frequently evokes images of the American frontier and references “Manifest Destiny,” at times explicitly posting artwork glorifying the forced displacement of Native American populations.
An image by the agency, featuring a chiseled Uncle Sam calling on Americans to “REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS,” was even directly sourced from an overt neo-Nazi account.
The agency has only continued to double down in the face of criticism this week. On Friday, it posted that “2026 will be the year of American Supremacy” over an image of then-Gen. George Washington crossing the Delaware River, which was emblazoned with the words “Return this Land,” a possible reference to a recently-founded “whites-only” town in rural Arkansas known as “Return to the Land.”
I don’t get the debate about this. There are two racist shibboleths on here, one that is overt and reflective of the hegemonic ideology in America that we learn in school, the other is thinly veiled Hitler worship. They are distinct signs, distinct histories. Worth noting. https://t.co/THsa39gU1C
— Palantir Neurodivergent Fellow 👊🔻🇵🇸 (@postcyborg) July 25, 2025
But Wednesday’s post calling for “100 million deportations” specifically was perhaps the most direct nod yet to those who believe the United States must be reconstituted as a white nation. As social media users were quick to point out, only about 47 million people living in America are foreign-born, according to the US Census Bureau.
Even if the administration kicked out every single immigrant—including legal residents and naturalized citizens—meeting such a goal would mean deporting 53 million people who were born in the US and are legally entitled to citizenship under the 14th Amendment.
If the use of the phrase “third world” did not make it obvious enough, the specific number—100 million—seems to betray the racial motivation behind the message.
Citing 2020 census data on the Wikipedia page for “Demographics of the United States,” one social media user pointed out that approximately 100 million people in the US identified as nonwhite.
Sorry if this has been pointed out but this is explicitly saying deport everyone who isn’t white because 100 million is the number of non white Americans. https://t.co/qvkmlG3LjD pic.twitter.com/hC3cLUs4gi
— barbarism critic (@barbarismcrit) January 1, 2026
The DHS post drew comparisons to one made earlier this year by the close Trump ally and unofficial White House operative Laura Loomer, who suggested that thanks to “Alligator Alcatraz,” the massive internment camp in Florida for those arrested by immigration agents, “the alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals,” which referenced the total number of Hispanic people in the United States.
While it’s almost certainly not possible for the administration to conduct a deportation campaign of such a staggering scale within Trump’s term of office, the administration’s latest post was frightening to many observers, even as they acknowledged that it was a “troll post” meant to rile people up.
It is still reflective of the Trump administration’s ideology with respect to immigration. Leaders of Trump’s deportation effort have acknowledged that they target people based on their appearance, and many nonwhite US citizens have been caught in the dragnet. Meanwhile, its refugee policy has welcomed only white South Africans, as Trump has enacted what he says is a “permanent pause on migration from all Third World Countries.”
During 2026, the administration has said it plans to target hundreds of US citizens each month for “denaturalization,” and Trump has called for it to be used against his most prominent critics, including the Somali-American Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and New York’s first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
“This is absolutely insane Nazi propaganda, posted by the US government,” said Ben Norton, editor of the Geopolitical Economy Report in response to DHS’s call for“100 million deportations.”
“It makes it clear that the Trump administration’s mass deportation drive is not actually about ‘illegal immigration.’ There are estimated to be 14 million undocumented immigrants in the US. But the fascist DHS wants to deport 100 million people,” Norton continued. “This is a call by the US regime for ethnic cleansing of racial minorities, to create a white-supremacist regime without anyone with ‘third world’ heritage.”
a couple of things come to mind.
1.my son’s are half mexican american, and i will defend them with my life.
2. i wonder what percentage of the population is white folks married to non-white folks? Loving was a long time ago.
3 i also wonder(and wouldnt know where to even look) what percentage of the population actually hold those extremely vile white supremacist views?
i would bet that #2 is a larger group than #3.
4 what percentage of the population don’t hold those views but won’t be affected and won’t care
Data is not the plural of anecdote, but here goes. My sister and I are white Americans of Italian, Croatian, and Portugese descent. Her husband is 100% Kiwi immigrant, not American; green card only. Their sons, obviously, are half of each.
One of the sons has been dating a full blooded Mexican girl for four years now. It’s serious enough that at Christmas my brother in law was practicing his Spanish. He is learning so he can converse with the presumed to-be in-laws (who speak almost no English).
I hate to sound like a bad uncle, but I admit I am a fair bit closer with this particular nephew than the other one. I’ve taken him on multi-pitch rock climbs, and up several mountains now.
He gave me a card at Christmas with a note that he thinks of me as a role model because I do cool shit like climbing, riding motorycles, and flying hang gliders. Fair enough, perhaps more people should follow their childhood dreams.
But what role am I supposed to model now, when our government is run by deranged monsters (Stephen Miller’s childhood dream, I hear, is to bomb Mexico…) who are credibly threatening to upend the life he is trying to create for himself?
Excellent, Amforts. I’ve been married for almost 50 years to a Filipino, we’re both from Hawai’i, and we have four kids and six grandchildren, who are even more mixed. Love to see these people parse them. My husband and I just laugh at those people. I’m Irish and English, btw, not that it matters. One of our daughters is married to a part Hawaiian man and one of our nieces is married to a man who is African American and Hawaiian. Have fun figuring out Hawai’i, and the rest of the nation, white supremists. Oh, another btw, we have a couple relatives married to their same sex partners. Have fun!!
I’ve sometimes wondered what Trumps heritage is.
That’s easy to answer. He is from German heritage-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_family#Ancestry
Would you believe that his father Fred Trump was once arrested at a KKK demonstration back in the 20s? Maybe here the apple does not fall far from the tree.
True, and to show the absurdity of the racial parsing we so love here in the good ol’ USA, the Klan demonstration Fred Trump was arrested at was not, as usually assumed, directed at Blacks, but Irish moving into Queens. Contemporary news reports say that the NYPD (overwhelmingly Irish Catholic at the time, so you can imagine their attitude towards the Klansmen) had an agreement with the Klan to allow the demonstration, as long as they didn’t wear their hoods. When the Klan reneged and put on their garb, the cops moved in and made arrests.
If this thing really gets going, Italian-Americans better watch out, since their status as White is fairly recent, and still considered provisional, at best, in some places.
Many years ago I worked as an organizer and business repo at the musicians union in NYC. One day a flutist at the American ballet Theater orchestra (who later became the President of the Local, asked me, “Hmm, Fiorillo… Fiorillo…, are you from the part of Italy where they are African, or are you from the part of Italy where they are German?”
Whoops, “… business rep…”
I like this version.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/trump-canada-yukon-1.3235254
“White Christian Nationalism” requires three things.
Interesting how a lot of this is funded by people who ain’t Christians. I guess they think they have a second homeland … at least for a while. Surely they can’t be expecting Trump’s loyalty, can they?
His mother came from Scotland…so he’s 50% Scottish
I use to tell people once that I was half Scotch and half dry but most people never got it so I gave up.
Outer Hebridies, which mean I fortunately don’t have too much in common with him (I’m from Fife)
Trump must finally be watching Nick At Night. Fuentes, that is.
A reverse Cloward-Piven Strategy.
Policies can become playthings, or weapons, that somehow get traction. Who is behind the wheel and who has the remote controls?
I have a strong suspicion that the 100 million figure is meant to include all of those born here to the 47 million migrants. These people have made very clear their feelings about birthright citizenship.
I’m reluctant to oppose the idea of establishing a white-only nation on land stolen from Indigenous peoples because I don’t want to be labeled an anti-Semite.
It looks like DT converted to Judaism, and is our “first Jewish president”. So if you are anti-Trump you are anti-Semitic I guess, or something like that, er wait, I’m confused.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBFi1joqfNE
So the remnants of the first nations are finally to be removed as well? Driven west into the Pacific as that painting suggests?
Look people, this is all just a way for JD Vance to get rid of his wife so that he can get busy with the Widow Kirk without having to ask the church for a divorce.
Trump’s hatred of immigrants quite evidently comes from his conflicted relationship with his mother, who was of course an immigrant herself. She temporarily abandoned him as a toddler, depriving him of the formation of a superego, and then kicked him out of the house when he was 13 in hopes that the New York Military Academy might crush his feral id (I’ve met one of his classmates — it failed).
Our Billionaire Overlords have finally realized that colonizing Mars is out of the question and that New Zealand isn’t big enough for all of them. They appear to think that turning North America, exclusive of Mexico, into an apartheid continent is the way that they’re going to deal with the planetary carrying capacity bomb of 8.25 billion and growing. Their success is about as likely as colonizing the Red Planet but will cause untold suffering in the meantime…
Thanks for the sense of humor David, got a chuckle out of me this morning
Scapegoating the Other to project all of our problems. In a declining society, an “effective” politician will distract from actions that alienate the base of support and scapegoat the internal Other. They have already created lots of external Other: Arabs, Iranians, Russians, Chinese, Somalis, Blacks, etc.) now we have the Internal Other to help re-mobilize the disgruntled knucle-draggers.
The sad reality here is that, as the article points out, the intention is not to control immigration. Just as the regime change operation in Venezuela is not about drugs. It is to abuse power, and create a reign of terror, while mobilizing political support. Create scapegoats, and whip up a Witch Hunt hysteria.
But: The fact is that the US fed gov does not have the resources to deport 14 million, let alone 100 million. The Bill of Rights and the constitution are virtually null and void, and no checks and balances left. So if the exec. does it and Congress and the courts are either complicit or are ignored what can we do?
Well . . . Americans with guns and ammunition could do more than Americans without guns and ammunition. Would they do more? I don’t know. But they could.
I began to wonder at the curious proximity of this flap emanating from DHS with the recent drama of u.s. actions in Venezuela — what 12-dimensional chess might the Trump government be playing? But after some thought on what might be going on I could not dismiss concluding the Trump government is as fragmented and chaotic as are Trump’s actions and policies. While I do believe Trump is governing on behalf of the very wealthy, catering to the black-holes of their greed and lust for power and his own. I also believe Trump is randomly indulging whims and beliefs of personalities and factions within the Elites while ever shifting his allegiances without evident reason or based on petty conflicts. I see dark portends for the Empire as the night of Trump chaos spreads upon it.
How much of this is coming from Trump as against how much of this is coming from Trump’s thinking-brain dogs such as Stephen Miller?
The tariff and other economic policy stuff is probably coming from Bessent and other Mellonites. Create the Greatest Depression Ever so that billionaires can buy up everyone and everything at pennies on the benjamin. The anti-agricultural actions in particular may be coming from J D Vance to raise the value of J D Vance’s investment in Acre Trader. https://acretrader.com/
The government dissassembly actions are probably being advised by Voight on behalf of Project 2025 in order to degrade America enough that the White Power Evangelical Churches of Christianazianity can reassemble the smoking pieces into their Gilead Republic of New Magastan.
etc.
Not so much 12 dimensional chess as 12 dimensional brain rot.
Are Italians still “White”?
They weren’t until the early 1950’s…
I suspect their might be a few unexpected consequences as DHS tries to implement this plan as FedGov formally abandons any pretense of the Rule of Law
This year’s SOTU is going to be memorable, to say the least.
This got me listening to Malvina Reynolds. I honestly think “Freedom’s Price” has gotten permanently out of reach; nobody will be willing to pay it.
I’m trying to escape to the mountains.