Lawmakers are pressing Meta to remove a paid Immigration and Customs Enforcement recruitment spot that uses a song embraced by neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups, escalating a fight over how far government propaganda can go on the world’s largest social platforms. The ad, which runs on Facebook and Instagram, features “We’ll Have Our Home Again,” a track critics say functions as a blood-and-soil anthem for the racist right, even as the Department of Homeland Security insists it is not “Nazi propaganda.” At stake is not only one controversial video but the broader pipeline that lets federal agencies target users with messaging steeped in extremist aesthetics.
Members of Congress, led by progressive Democrats, argue that Meta’s willingness to cash checks for this kind of content shows the company has learned little from past scandals over political disinformation and hate. They are demanding that Meta and its peers disclose how much money they have taken from DHS and ICE, explain their vetting process for government ads, and commit to cutting off campaigns that lean on white nationalist symbols. I see their push as an early test of whether platform “safety” rules apply when the client is the federal government itself.
The ICE ad and its neo-Nazi soundtrack
The recruitment video at the center of the dispute is a slick, fast-cut montage of tactical gear, border scenes, and agents in formation, set to the song “We’ll Have Our Home Again.” According to civil rights researchers, that track, often shortened to “Have Our Home Again,” has become a staple in white nationalist circles, where its lyrics about reclaiming a homeland are read as a call for White unity and ethnic separation. The lyrics do not explicitly mention race, but investigators note that the imagery of blood, soil, and a besieged “home” mirrors long standing fascist slogans. One analysis describes how the chorus, with its vow that “by blood or sweat, we’ll win our home,” tracks closely with the rhetoric of groups that openly push for White unity.
Extremism monitors have traced the song back to a far right folk scene linked to the Mannerbund, a network of white nationalist activists who use traditionalist aesthetics to launder their politics. Reporting on the Trump administration’s social media strategy has pointed out that phrases from “Have Our Home Again” are nearly identical to language used in official DHS messaging, suggesting a deliberate echo of that subculture. One investigation into Mannerbund ties notes that the phrase used by DHS is nearly identical to the song’s lyrics, a convergence that is hard to chalk up to coincidence. For white nationalist audiences, that kind of dog whistle is the point: it signals that the agency is a friendly home for their worldview without ever spelling it out in plain text.
DHS’s defiance and quiet retreat
When civil rights groups and journalists first flagged the ICE ad’s soundtrack, DHS did not back down. Asked directly about an ICE recruitment video that used “We’ll Have Our Home Again,” the department responded that “Not everything you dislike is ‘Nazi propaganda,’” a line that framed critics as hysterical and implicitly minimized the song’s documented role in neo-Nazi spaces. That dismissive quote has been widely cited in coverage of the controversy, including in a detailed account of how the ad was promoted on Facebook and Instagram and how DHS handled the backlash. The department’s stance fit a broader pattern in which officials brush off concerns about extremist symbolism as mere political disagreement.
Yet after that public rebuke, DHS quietly removed at least one recruitment post featuring the song from its official Instagram account. Reporting on the episode notes that after the department publicly rejected allegations that the track had Nazi ties, the post disappeared from Inst, a tacit acknowledgment that the optics were untenable. One reconstruction of the timeline explains that After that removal, the ad continued to run as a paid placement on Meta’s platforms, where it could still stand out to white nationalists even if it no longer lived on DHS’s own feed. That split decision, defiant in rhetoric but cautious in practice, is part of what has infuriated lawmakers.
Jayapal, Balint and the push to cut ICE ad deals
Representative Pramila Jayapal, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Representative Becca Balint have emerged as the most prominent voices in Congress demanding that Meta pull the ICE ad and end similar partnerships. In a letter to the company, they argue that no platform that claims to fight extremism should profit from government campaigns that recycle white nationalist propaganda. Their office has published a detailed account of the correspondence, explaining that they are pressing Meta and Google to end ICE ad partnerships that rely on white nationalist themes and to explain why such content was accepted on their platforms in the first place. The public statement from Jayapal underscores that this is not a one off dispute but part of a pattern of DHS messaging.
The lawmakers say their concerns go beyond symbolism to the scale of the relationship between DHS and the tech giants. They note that the letter to Meta cites reporting that DHS has spent millions of dollars on paid ads with the company’s platforms, including ads that clearly target vulnerable communities with fear based narratives about crime and migration. In their words, the harms from these campaigns are “severe,” because they normalize the idea that federal agents should seek out extremists and use lethal force. Their statement on the letter explains that the lawmakers are demanding transparency about the scope of DHS’s agreements with Meta and Google and why such ads were allowed on the platforms in the first place. Another section of that release stresses that the lawmakers are demanding transparency about the scope of the companies’ agreements with Meta and Google, underscoring how central that demand is to their campaign.
Meta’s role and a history of extremist aesthetics
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has tried to position itself as a neutral conduit for government messaging, but its own rules complicate that story. The company’s public facing policies bar praise or support for organized hate and promise to limit the spread of extremist content, yet its ad systems have repeatedly approved campaigns that flirt with those boundaries. The ICE recruitment video is a textbook example: it uses a song that experts link to neo-Nazi networks while avoiding explicit slurs, a combination that can slip past automated filters and overworked human reviewers. Critics argue that a company with Meta’s resources and reach, described on its own corporate site at Meta, should be able to recognize and reject such dog whistles when they come from a paying client.
The controversy also fits into a longer story about how DHS and ICE have used social media to launder white nationalist talking points into mainstream feeds. Investigations into the department’s online strategy describe a stream of posts and ads that borrow language and imagery from far right subcultures, including memes and slogans that originated in neo-Nazi forums. One report on how ICE has used Facebook and Instagram details how recruiters have leaned on neo-Nazi memes and sought out extremists at gun shows, treating those spaces as fertile ground for new hires. Another account of ICE recruiters notes that the chorus to this “truly appalling” song repeats “Oh by God we’ll have our home again, By God we’ll have our home, By blood or sweat, we’ll win our home,” language that one writer argues is tailor made to resonate with officers and propagandists at the agency, as documented in a piece on By God.
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