Why DHS Attracts Members of Hate Groups and Extremists
The Department of Homeland Security doesn’t need to seek out and hire members of hate groups; it harbors them
Violent footage of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) taking noncitizens and citizens into custody, some for nothing more than expressing their displeasure with what’s happening, has become common in 2025. Car windows are smashed for appearing Latino, a militarized presence in Black and Brown communities, and even shots have been fired at Latinos for fearing unidentified, armed, masked men trying to accost them and fleeing.
It’s not just ICE agents; federal agents from various agencies, like the FBI, DEA, ATF, IRS, the Bureau of Prisons, and U.S. Marshals, are participating alongside nearly 1,000 local and state law enforcement agencies. They’re being led by ICE’s Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO), headed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has a long and sordid history of hate group members and far-right extremists in its ranks.
It’s an issue every administration denied until they could deny it no longer. DHS has historically been riddled with people who harbor racial, social, and political animus toward the vast majority of the population, particularly Black people and Latinos. Hearing agents say things like, “liberals already ruined [the country],” and telling people their rights don’t matter because Trump is in office, should come as no surprise when considering who these agents are and the culture within an agency tasked with “defending the homeland” from supposed domestic terrorism.
That hate and bigotry were born with the agency when it was created in 2002 in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Much of the justification behind its creation was based on broad Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiments, alongside equating the U.S.-Mexico border, and therefore, Latino immigrants, with national security. What’s happening to Latinos today has been in the making for decades, with misguided bipartisan support.
It’s incremental xenophobia that was birthed by agents of white supremacy, dating back to the founders who bemoaned the “Germanization of Pennsylvania” and brought forth the same xenophobic rhetoric we hear today. At the time, they lamented how Germans wouldn’t assimilate or learn the language and talked about breaking up German communities to whitewash their votes. Yes, even Franklin feared “white extinction,” arguing that Germans weren’t Anglo-Saxon Protestants, a key tenet of so-called “whiteness.”
After hundreds of years of weaponizing the same language against Irish, Italian, Chinese, and now, Latino immigrants, the country echoes rhetoric that is hundreds of years old and has no basis in reality. What’s happening today was not just born in DHS, but imported hundreds of years ago by the same people who would go on to commit genocide in North America and steal an entire continent while claiming to be “chosen by God” to do so.
Case After Case, Denial After Denial
There have been multiple documented cases of DHS personnel, including Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and ICE, being linked to extremist or hate groups. As cases were exposed, every DHS secretary denied for decades that it was a systemic issue until Alejandro Mayorkas finally admitted it was a problem in 2023. He did so after initially denying it for the first two years of President Joe Biden's term.
After multiple reports had already exposed far-right extremist behavior in DHS agencies. When Mayorkas was asked in a House hearing about white supremacist infiltration in DHS, he responded by saying what previous DHS Secretaries have said, saying, "I have not seen any evidence of white supremacy or extremism in the ranks of CBP or ICE."
His comments came after many cases that occurred under Mayorkas. For example, in 2021, a DHS policy analyst resigned after being found to have ties to a white nationalist group. Ian Smith, who participated in immigration policy discussions at the White House, was linked to many prominent white nationalists, such as Richard Spencer, and self-described “white advocate” and online publisher of the American Renaissance, Jared Taylor.
Two months later, in 2021, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform issued a report on Border Patrol agents who were exposed in 2019 for participating in racist Facebook groups for many years. According to the committee, data showed that CBP found “60 Border Patrol agents engaged in misconduct” in secret online groups and were subject to discipline.
“The most prominent of these groups, a private group for Border Patrol agents called “I’m 10-15,” had more than 9,500 members in July 2019,” reads the report. “The Committee’s investigation followed alarming media reports of CBP employees threatening harm to migrants and elected officials on the 'I’m 10-15’ page.”
The committee found that CBP reduced punishments for most of the agents who were involved in posting hateful content, and 57 of them continued to work with migrants as of October 2021. The committee also found that CBP was aware of its agents' inappropriate posts on the "I'm 10-15" Facebook group in 2016 and didn’t act. Thus, highlighting a major underlying problem with reducing disciplinary action against agents who harbor hateful beliefs among their ranks: broader racist ideologies from the top down.
Three examples taken from the report are telling.
A Border Patrol agent who posted a sexually explicit doctored image and derogatory comments about a Member of Congress had his discipline reduced from removal to a 60-day suspension and was awarded back pay.
A Border Patrol supervisor who improperly posted an internal CBP video of a migrant falling off a cliff to their death, as well as an explicit and offensive comment about a Member of Congress, had his discipline reduced from removal to a 30-day suspension.
A Border Patrol agent with a history of multiple infractions was allowed to retire with disability benefits rather than face removal or any other discipline after he posted a photograph of a drowned father and child and referred derisively to them as "floaters."
While the 2021 report admonishes CBP because “Weaknesses in CBP's disciplinary process hampered its ability to hold Border Patrol agents accountable,” and “These outcomes were the result of a number of failings at CBP,” that’s as far as it went. DHS and its myriad child agencies have continued to promote and embody the behavior it's known for, as no guardrails have been put in place. Instead, the requirements to join DHS agencies continue to be relaxed.
Culture of Hate
For Mayorkas and his predecessors, the red flags were always there. A 2021 DHS Internal Report by the DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) highlighted a major issue seen across all of law enforcement in the United States in recent years, when it found agents not taking their social media use or bias training seriously and laughing the training off.
“One headquarters official received reports that agents considered the training 'window dressing,' and treated it as a joke, because they believed the [Laredo] sector would not make changes to incorporate the policies being taught. Another confirmed that agents receiving the training were disruptive,” reads the 2021 OIG report.
The OIG report acknowledged that extremist infiltration is a serious problem by highlighting more cases where leadership at CBP or DHS didn’t take any action to address rank-and-file racism within its agencies and how “a few senior leaders do not believe CBP policies related to social media are constitutional.” However, the problem isn’t as much about an agent's social media conduct as it is about how their beliefs dictate how they do their jobs. With employees found to have ties to the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and neo-Nazi groups, it behooves them to address it. The OIG report found many more cases that weren’t properly addressed.
“These seven employees’ racist posts were on a private, CBP-centric Facebook group, Laredo Choir Practice, and on personal social media accounts,” reads the OIG report about a separate case in 2017. “The FAD [Final Agency Decision] also found that two supervisors’ responses to the allegations were “ineffective and inappropriate” and that it appeared “management took very little initiative to address the racial harassment.”
In 2022, an internal DHS report covering potential violent extremists within the agency following the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was released. The review again downplayed the impacts within the agency and only identified five employees involved in domestic violent extremism between fiscal years 2019 and 2021. The report did note that DHS reporting failures masked the true number of agents with such beliefs.
“...the Department has significant gaps that have impeded its ability to comprehensively prevent, detect, and respond to potential threats related to domestic violent extremism within DHS,” reads the internal report.
Despite this, Mayorkas continued to minimize the overall culture within DHS agencies. However, nine months later, a report from the Project on Government and Oversight (POGO), released a report on a leaked Oath Keepers membership list that showed hundreds of its members have worked for DHS. The report moved more than 60 Democratic lawmakers to sign onto a letter to Mayorkas demanding an update on actions taken to address extremist ties within its workforce.
Mayorkas never publicly responded to Democrats and would never admit it was a systemic issue. He only pointed to programs and suggestions made to agency leaders about how to address hate and extremism within its ranks. Aside from the more public policy shifts to address extremism within DHS, whether any of the policy ideas suggested to agencies like CBP were implemented or whether they failed, succeeded, or need improvement is anyone’s guess.
With Trump scaling back countering domestic terrorism efforts at DHS by at least 30% in March and other federal agencies earlier this year, it should come as no surprise to find these programs also affected.
Conclusion
Agencies like CBP, which harbor a long and well-documented history of racism and bigotry that goes unaddressed, inevitably infect every department at a more systemic level. From biases and hateful attitudes from asylum agents and detention center staff treating migrants like animals to what you do and don’t see agents commit on the streets, it’s impossible to deny the issue and continue to limit accountability in what is arguably the least transparent federal domestic law enforcement agency out of them all.
People who harbor these beliefs come and go almost willingly throughout our government. For federal agents such as those in agencies under the purview of DHS, they’ve made careers out of further bolstering and advancing a largely racist and wholly xenophobic-driven agenda. Most are rewarded with nice retirement packages paid for by tax dollars. No matter what is done to address the problem, the agents themselves, who laugh off any idea of bringing rational change, are the biggest roadblock to any reform, thus making it a systemic issue.
While Mayorkas eventually acknowledged hate and extremism within DHS in a Senate hearing that DHS had disciplined employees for extremist activity, stating, "We have terminated individuals who have violated our standards of conduct, including those engaged in extremist behavior," and after he launched a “Countering Extremism Working Group" to address radicalization in the department, not much will change. Not only because Trump is killing it all, but because of the revolving door that allows people like Tom Homan to whet his appetite to mass deport Latinos under Obama, and again, under Trump.
In addition, people like conservative author Darren Beattie, who had to resign from his White House speechwriting duties in 2016 after being found to have various links to white nationalist groups and people (including Peter Brimelow, the founder of the VDare website, to which this author was once a target of), Beattie is now the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the Department of State. Secretary of State Marco Rubio appointed Beattie to the position on his first day as Secretary of State, highlighting the agency’s white nationalist agenda.
When speaking of the culture of hate at CBP, you only need to look at Brandon Judd, Border Patrol Agent and president of the National Border Patrol Council union (NBPC), which boasts 18,000 members. He promotes the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory. At ICE, they’re everywhere, and many harbor the same views as ICE Assistant Chief Counsel James Rodden, who ran a social media account under “GlomarResponder” that was overtly racist. The more you look, the more you see them tight in front of your face.
As long as they’re around, expect more congressional testimony like that found in the House’s 2021 report mentioned above, “The posts included images of dead migrants, sexually explicit images, and threatening language, some of which was directed at Members of Congress.” As policing gets out of control, bolstered by how federal agents are acting under Trump, what’s happening on our streets will only continue to get worse before it gets any better.
Other Recent Cases and Reports
There have been far too many cases to document in one article, but here are some more notable and recent cases that should raise red flags. To quote former FBI Director Chris Wray, “red lights are blinking everywhere.” It’s beyond time to address weak vetting and lack of accountability in all of law enforcement because most cases are only exposed due to leaks or external investigations, while disciplinary actions are often kept secret.
Federal investigators in early 2018 found racist text messages sent by Matthew Bowen, a Border Patrol agent in Arizona, charged with hitting a migrant with his truck. His defense argued that this language was commonplace in the Tucson Sector of Border Patrol, according to the American Immigration Council.
In 2020, Travis Frey, a senior employee at the Nevada Southern Detention Center, a facility run by the private prison firm CoreCivic and contracted with ICE, was active on a neo-Nazi website called Iron March, according to Vice News and the Nevada Current.
In 2019, Christopher Hasson, a lieutenant in the Coast Guard, a DHS agency, was arrested for stockpiling weapons and planning a mass-casualty attack targeting politicians and journalists. He was described as a "domestic terrorist" inspired by white supremacist ideology, but he did not face terrorism related charges, as reported by NPR.
Additional reports worth noting:
CBP’s legacy of racism from the American immigration Council.
Declassified 2015 investigation into extremist ties to law enforcement.
Investigation into extremists in law enforcement from the Brennan Center.
I’m an independent investigative journalist who enjoys digging deeper into the stories you see on the news. Find my work at Unicorn Riot, The Antagonist Magazine, Latino Rebels, and more. I’m also on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and Threads. To support my work, become a paid subscriber or donate via Venmo, PayPal, or Cash App.