Homeland Insecurity: The Rhetoric Behind the Enforced Disappearance and Torture of Immigrants in the US -

President Donald Trump participates in a walking tour of the immigration detention center nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz”, Tuesday, July 1, 2025, in Ochopee, Florida. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

15 September 2026

By Jeffrey Dunn, Research Director

In July, Crude Accountability attended the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting in Vienna, Austria. Crude Accountability participated in a side event discussing growing concerns about enforced disappearances in the OSCE region and intervened during the second plenary session of the meeting, highlighting the racist rhetoric of the Trump regime and its use of torture, including enforced disappearance, against immigrants in the United States.

We cautioned ODHIR staff, ambassadors of participating states, and civil society representatives alike that the official rhetoric of the US government was not simply akin to Nazi slogans, but actually copied language, which, just 81 years ago, led to the torture, murder, and extermination of millions across Europe. We raised our deep concerns that this rhetoric is part and parcel of a racist, dehumanizing policy that results in arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and inhumane treatment at the hands of the Department of Homeland Security, specifically within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This is, however, language that is used throughout the regime, including by the president himself.

“One People. One Homeland. One Heritage.” (Posted on the US Department of Labor’s X account on January 10, 2026) This is a slightly altered version of the Nazi slogan, Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ein Fuehrer. (One People. One Realm. One Leader.)

“We’ll have our home again.” (Posted on the Department of Homeland Security’s X account on January 9, 2026) This is a reference to a white supremacist song used by White Nationalist groups, such as Patriot Front, with references to reclaiming home towns through blood and sweat, from a foreign displacement. The same lyrics reference the first lines of the manifesto of the white-supremacist mass-murderer, Ryan Christopher Palmeter, found after he killed three people in Jacksonville, Florida in 2023.

And, “Remigrate.” (Posted on the Department of Homeland Security’s X account on October 14, 2025) (Also posted on the White House’s X account with the slight alteration, “remigration,” on December 31, 2025). The term is a reference to the French author, Renaud Camus, and his book, Le Grand Replacement (The Great Replacement), which established the white genocide conspiracy theory. Camus, in his book, argues that the only solution to this “great replacement” is “remigration” which constitutes the forced migration or expulsion of non-whites from “white states.”

The ideological beliefs espoused in these slogans not only suggest an inherent white supremacist devotion within the Trump regime, but they also highlight the legal rhetoric in executive orders (EOs), proclamations, and other directives issued by it. EOs 14156, 14160, 14161, 14163, 14165, 14218, 14287 and Proclamations 10886, 10888, 10949, and 10973 routinely describe immigrants in the US as “criminals,” “terrorists,” and “invaders.” This is despite the fact that non-criminals, legal residents, and even citizens have repeatedly been targeted in the Trump regime’s immigration crackdown. Non criminals comprise the bulk of those detained by ICE and CBP–a ratio of 2.2 to 1 among detainees as of July 2026.¹

Under the directive of the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the State Department established the “Office of Remigration” under the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, tasked with financially assisting the Trump regime’s mass deportation campaign.

Combined, these facts demonstrate an intent to dehumanize immigrants in the US and to justify their inhumane treatment by using white supremacist, derogatory, and defaming language. This rhetoric is found not just within the upper echelons of the executive branch, but reaches deep into ICE, including among its officers.

In a series of interviews published by DEADCRAB films (also under confessionsofaniceagent), Karl Loftus provides insights on a systemic trend among agents: white supremacist leanings.

“100’s [sic] of thousands of illegals coming through the northern and southern border the last decade are in the states committing fraud, stealing billions of tax dollars from the feds and local state govts. They send that money back over through PAC’s [sic] to push certain politicians into certain positions, to bring third world issues to America” (Volume 2),

“get his ass inline [sic] with the detainees” (a white ICE officer referring to a native american officer, seemingly indicating that the officer should be locked up with the detainees) (Volume 7),

“America is ideally a white christian nation” (Volume 7),

“I see the worst of mankind on a daily basis in this job” (regarding immigrants allegedly committing “fraud”) (Volume 10),

“We got that wetback²” (Volume 11),

“I was introduced to the made up word, racism, at an early age… Yes, racism does not exist.” (Volume 15),

“We as a country have watched millions of people come into our communities and change them into whatever culture they are bringing in from the outside” (Volume 15),

“We are told we should tolerate these actions because it is the foundation of America, yet who stands for the American culture these days… These communities and towns were established by white europeans” (Volume 15),

“The average Somali has an IQ of 70. They are not smart enough to figure out the system that they are defrauding” (Volume 17),

“Minnesota, like all west coast states, wants to keep as many illegal aliens as possible so that they don’t lose congressional seats after the next census” (Volume 17),

“They are african muslims who really do see us as the great white satan” (Volume 17).

New court documents filed by the plaintiffs of Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem (now Vasquez Perdomo v. Mullin), a 2025 lawsuit that challenged the legality of immigration stops on the basis of ethnicity, race, language, and other identifying factors, further highlight racism at the heart of DHS. Bodycam footage from the ICE raids in LA, 2025, documents officers repeatedly using racial slurs in their targeting of immigrants during the raids. Officers are recorded saying or texting:

“There was a guy, I’m pretty sure he’s wet³ he was just sitting in that minivan”,

“Wait, is he wetting⁴ him down, or?”,

“There’s one right there, it looked like a tonk in the driver seat”,

“one tonk got away”,

“Yeah, just plug us in wherever you see some tonks and we’ll jump out”,

“That’s a tonk right there, too”,

And “tonks⁵ everywhere selling food”.

The plaintiffs argue that immigration officers did not employ “pre-stop individualized, particularized assessment of reasonable suspicion of targets,” but rather employed racial profiling to target as many Latinos as possible.

Authoritarian rhetoric is also at the heart of the Trump regime. Trump’s authoritarian language, such as calling his political enemies “vermin” and “the enemy from within,” proclaiming he’d be dictator “only on day one” of his second presidency, utilizing AI to show himself dropping excrement on protestors and waging an apocalypse in Chicago, proclaiming himself “king” on social media and using AI to generate a “Game of Thrones” style intro showing the Resolute Desk as the “Iron Throne,” is well known. This rhetoric, however, has made its way into the official policies of the executive branch, notably:

These actions generally label opposition to Trump and his policies, especially his immigration policies, as “domestic terrorists.” This was the case for seven Americans, who were solely charged with “providing material support to terrorists” and labeled as “Antifa Cell members.” For this single charge, they received between 1.8 to 15 years in prison. This a demonstration of rhetoric translated to executive action under the Trump regime. As with the racist rhetoric above, so too is this authoritarianism translated into the ethos of ICE officers, as reported by Karl Loftus.

“don’t come out and put yourself, targets… in dangerous situations by interfering or getting in our way” (referring to protestors) (Volume 9),

“At least 3-4 of us told her to just drive off and to go home so she doesn’t get dragged out of her vehicle” (referring to Renee Good who was in her vehicle outside her home) (Volume 12),

“we couldn’t care less what the public opinion is” (Volume 12),

“If we were secret police, we would be snatching everything and everyone off the streets, not just illegals”⁶ (Volume 12),

“They’ll show up in the middle of the night,⁷ take you without a fucking person knowing what happened and thats it”⁸ (Volume 12),

“I would love to throat punch some purple haired liberal protestors” (Volume 17),

“I started out in BP so the border patrol agent in me wants to fuck people up writ large…” (Volume 17),

“But as it goes to what you’re seeing with these shootings, we’re not gonna stop” (Volume 27),

“I think this is going to get worse if people don’t at least just stop fighting law enforcement” (Volume 27),

“Law enforcement, when they choose to stop you, just understand that… [you] could die…” (Volume 27),

“At the end of the day, it’s cops and robbers. I don’t have any type of remorse for that stuff because that’s the game we play” (Volume 27).

These facts combined demonstrate two convergent ideologies pervasive throughout the Trump regime: White supremacy and Authoritarianism. This, in part, explains the prevalence of alleged enforced disappearances and torture at the hands of ICE and CBP. The racial rhetoric, combined with the authoritarian rhetoric, paves a mental road for the Trump regime to dehumanize, and thus treat inhumanely, immigrants and others swept up in the raids conducted by the Department of Homeland Security.

This ratio is based on those in detention as of July 11, 2026. It combines detainees with no criminal record and pending charges against those with a criminal record per data provided by The Guardian. ↩︎
Wetback is a derogatory term used to refer to foreign nationals residing in the U.S., most commonly Mexicans. Coined from crossing the Rio Grande. ↩︎
Short for “wetback.” ↩︎
Another reference to “wetback.” ↩︎
“Tonk” is allegedly the sound a flashlight makes when smashing against the skull of migrants and was deemed inappropriate for use among Border Patrol officers in 2019 due to its derogatory origin. ↩︎
US citizens and legal residents have been detained and deported by ICE and CBP. ↩︎
Around 1am in the morning on September 30th, 2025, ICE agents raided a Chicago apartment complex utilizing Black Hawk Helicopters and flashbangs to break into resident apartments and detain those inside. As a part of Operation Midway Blitz, victims of the raid included US citizens and children who were zip-tied and held at gunpoint. ↩︎
Amnesty International, Cristosal, Crude Accountability, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, and the Miami Herald have documented roughly 3200 cases of probable enforced disappearance. ↩︎