ICE and Homeland Security busted pushing right-wing propaganda and conspiracy theories

Multiple federal departments have been pushing far-right propaganda to federal employees.

"An arm of the Justice Department regularly sent summaries and links to articles from an online white nationalist publication over the last year, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found. In addition, similar newsletters sent to the Labor Department, ICE, HUD and the Department of Homeland Security, included links and content from hyperpartisan and conspiracy-oriented publishers," BuzzFeed News reported Friday.

"In daily bulletins about media coverage for the department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the nation’s immigration courts, a government contractor sometimes included links to VDare, an anti-Semitic and racist site whose editor who has claimed that American culture is under threat from non-white peoples. That contractor, a Dade City, Florida-based company called TechMIS, also compiles newsletters for other agencies including the Department of Labor, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Office of Housing and Urban Development," BuzzFeed noted.

"Among these publications: the Western Journal, a hyperpartisan publisher whose founder once questioned if then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama was Muslim, and the Epoch Times, a newspaper associated with the Chinese Falun Gong movement and whose related media properties have backed QAnon, a conspiracy theory claiming a group of high ranking officials known as the 'Deep State' is subverting President Donald Trump’s goals," the report noted.

Becca Lewis of Data & Society blasted the revelation as "deeply disturbing."

“Unfortunately, they mark a continuation of a long history in which government agencies, and particularly law enforcement agencies, have promoted and enforced white supremacist and racist agendas. This also unfortunately shows that many white supremacist and far-right publications that seem to be on the 'fringes' of society actually have huge mainstream influence and impact," Lewis explained.

An immigration court employee believes the tenor changed after Trump took office.

“It shows an increasing effort to politically charge the perspective of immigration judges who are being tasked with being neutral judges who apply the law,” the employee said. “The administration has been taking steps to make the court a political weapon in various ways, some big, some small, this is just one example.”