Colorado police analysts warned their colleagues that a federal agency's social media was attracting neo-Nazis.

"I renew my request about what DHS has done to ensure it has not been infiltrated by violent extremists, and who is responsible for this dangerous recruitment campaign."

— Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin

The warning came from inside the system. Not from civil rights groups or journalists, but from Colorado's Information Analysis Center, a state fusion center whose job is to assess threats to public safety. In March 2026, analysts there produced an internal bulletin alerting law enforcement offices nationwide that social media posts by the Department of Homeland Security recruiting for ICE contained enough white supremacist themes to pose a genuine danger.

The bulletin cautioned that "violent extremists" might perceive "White Supremacy Ideology in ICE Recruitment Materials, Leading to a Potentially Increased Threat Environment." It warned these posts could convince white supremacists to join or infiltrate ICE and engage in bias-motivated violence. The message was clear: the federal government's own recruiting arm was signaling to neo-Nazis that they belonged inside it.

Translation: state police told other state police that DHS was accidentally building a pipeline from white nationalist forums to federal law enforcement badges.

The recruitment campaign ran under then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was fired in March and replaced by Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin. The posts were crafted as part of a deliberate effort to make ICE appear bold and patriotic. Instead, they read like content curated for the alt-right.

One January post on X featured an image of a lone man on horseback with the caption "We'll have our home again." To most Americans, it looked like frontier nostalgia. To white supremacists, it was a direct quotation from "We'll Have Our Home Again," a song by Pine Tree Riots that has been adopted by organizations including Patriot Front. The Colorado bulletin noted that lyrics from this song opened the manifesto of a white supremacist who killed three people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida in 2023. Members of Patriot Front have been recorded chanting its refrain: "By God, we'll have our home."

Another recurring element was the "Moon Man" meme, a character from a 1980s McDonald's advertising campaign that has been adopted by online racists for its resemblance to a Ku Klux Klan member. The bulletin documented one social media user who replied to a DHS post featuring the Moon Man with "it's TND time" — an abbreviation for "total n*r death" — and attached his own version of the meme showing the character posing before a swastika flag with a rifle.

The department also frequently used the term "remigration," which the Colorado analysts explained "dates back to 1930s Germany," where it was deployed to advocate for the forced expulsion of Jews. The Southern Poverty Law Center separately alleged that DHS "is using white nationalist imagery and language to recruit new employees and arrest immigrants."

DHS defended its tactics as "bold and effective."

The Colorado bulletin documented what white supremacists were doing with these signals. On neo-Nazi message boards, users discussed the advantages of joining ICE, viewing it as an opportunity for "accelerating conflict in the US" and "beating up race traitors." One user claimed someone in their network had already been a captain at an ICE-contracted detention facility. In a neo-Nazi accelerationist channel, internet users talked about infiltrating ICE and using its authority to form a "breakaway militia," auguring a nationwide race war.

The bulletin included a disclaimer noting it did not intend "to imply ideological alignment between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and white supremacist ideology." But the analysts made clear that whether intentional or not, the posts were gaining traction among violent extremists who were encouraging each other to sign up as immigration agents.

The fact that a state fusion center — part of the same counterterrorism apparatus created after 9/11 — issued this warning makes it particularly significant. Claire Trickler-McNulty, who spent eight years as an ICE official under Obama, Biden, and Trump's first administration, called the evidence "rather damning." She noted that a fusion center putting out a threat assessment based on DHS messaging was "surprising, even if it seems appropriate."

When Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse raised these findings with Mullin at a June 3 hearing, the new homeland security secretary dismissed them outright. Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Mich., said he was "very concerned that your department is promoting white nationalist, anti-immigrant sentiments on official social media accounts."

Mullin brushed it off. "There is no facts," he said. "You throw out 'nationalism,' 'Naziism,' and that is exactly what causes the hatred and the violence that happens to our officers every single day."

A DHS spokesperson went further, calling Whitehouse's concerns part of a campaign to promote "dangerous anti-ICE conspiracy theories." The agency wrote that "comparing recruitment efforts aimed at filling critical public safety roles to extremist rhetoric is not only absurd, but it also dangerously undermines the mission and sacrifices of federal officers."

The irony is hard to miss. A federal law enforcement agency accused its critics of undermining its mission while state counterterrorism analysts warned that its own social media was creating a "permissive environment" for vigilante violence.

Noem never responded to Whitehouse's initial letter asking about the origin of the recruitment posts. Since leaving DHS, she has taken a role as special envoy for Trump's so-called Shield of the Americas program. Her predecessor in departing, former Border Patrol commander-at-large Greg Bovino, has been more visible: he attended a "remigration" conference with white nationalists in Portugal, where he compared himself approvingly to Nazi general Erwin Rommel, describing the Third Reich strategist as someone who "captured the imagination of the public."

Under Mullin, DHS appears to be posting fewer of the most provocative materials. The department also reversed Noem's decision to lower training standards for new ICE hires. But Whitehouse's latest letter makes clear he is still waiting for answers about who authorized the posts and what safeguards exist against hiring individuals with ties to extremist organizations.

The Colorado bulletin raised another concern that DHS has not addressed: these posts could provoke violence from the other direction. Antifascist activists, the analysts warned, might "misinterpret DHS messaging and perceive all ICE personnel as supportive of or complicit in white supremacy, therefore creating perceived justification for violence targeting those individuals."

Spencer Reynolds, a former DHS official who now works at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, rejected the bulletin's framing that both sides face equal risk. "White supremacy, not the people who adamantly oppose it, has fomented mass violence and oppression throughout our country's existence," he said.

State police warned their colleagues that a federal agency was accidentally recruiting neo-Nazis. The agency's secretary told Congress there were no facts to support the warning. The former head of that agency's predecessor compared himself to a Nazi general at a white nationalist conference in Europe.

The question is not whether DHS meant to signal to white supremacists. The question is why it took an internal counterterrorism bulletin from Colorado cops for anyone to notice.