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.”
