ICE Is Celebrating Pride with Propaganda and People Aren’t Falling for It
Photo by Mario Tama/Getty
ICE is trying to join in on the Pride Month fun by pushing “propaganda” photos of trans-inclusive holding cells, and people aren’t having it.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been tweeting strings of photos from the Cibola County Correctional Center in New Mexico, which opened a separate section for trans women in 2017.
The thread shows photos of inmates smiling while reading, playing basketball and gardening—because surely these folks just love being held in ramshackle prisons without legal recourse or due process. Happy Pride to you, too!
“ICE is committed to upholding an immigration detention system that prioritizes the health, safety, and welfare of all of those in our care in custody, including LGBTI individuals,” read one ghastly tweet.
Yesterday, ICE provided an extensive media tour of the agency’s dedicated housing unit for transgender women. (1/) pic.twitter.com/oGOMglzdt9
— ICE (@ICEgov) June 13, 2019
The irony of the tweets is strong as more and more trans women continue to die in ICE detention, including one woman who died on June 1, making her the second woman within a year to die in ICE custody.
Facing injury, abuse and neglect, trans women are falling gravely ill in ICE detention, but sure, a couple tweets can put a nice band-aid on that.
Embroiled in a mesh of reports of unfair arrests, inhumane conditions and the deaths of children, the tweets’ cheerful tone seems a bit disconcerting—or really, nauseating. After all, who cares about unusable bathrooms, expired food and mold-infested holding cells when you can play basketball and pose for ICE propaganda photo shoots?
Apparently ICE would like us to know that they don’t discriminate based on gender identity for the people they detain, starve, kill and force into unlivable conditions. Good to know.
Cool concentration camp bro
— Arielle Goldman (@ArielleGoldman) June 15, 2019
I cant explain how angry it gets me that ICE is on this damn app cheerfully spewing propaganda to make their concentration camps look like happy go lucky summer camps for migrants who want to find themselves through arts & crafts and sporting activities.
FUCK ICE FUCK ICE FUCK
— Sailor Space Junk #protectTPS (@TwitNumeroUno) June 16, 2019
Gay or straight, cia or trans—everyone starves and dies alike. Happy Pride from ICE!
— anthony bourdain’s noah reservations (@noahpsychs) June 15, 2019
ICE tweeting about new trans-inclusive holding cells to try and garner positive attention from lgbts and liberals during pride month is so shameful and horrendous i cant even speak about it what fleas such cockroaches such snakes
— sori gay (@soridyke) June 15, 2019
politically splitting propaganda from ice during pride fuck u ice https://t.co/7NmHeL2U7g
— poboy (@rattlecoyote69) June 16, 2019
Often compared to concentration camps, ICE holding cells are notoriously awful. So it’s no surprise that efforts to push an image of facilities as happy, healthy places earned immediate comparisons to Nazi propaganda.
One user compared it to the Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia, where Nazis made the now infamous 1944 Theresienstadt film to pull wool over the eyes of the International Red Cross and feign that they weren’t brutally abusing those imprisoned in concentration camps.
Theresenstadt, 1942.
It was a huge lie.
And so is this thread.
This thread is nothing more than NAZI propaganda.
ICE should be disbanded.
— (((Statistikhengst))) (@Statistikhengst) June 16, 2019
By now I think people have seen ICE’s disgusting display of propaganda of the Cibola County Corrections Center for transgender immigrants. I didn’t miss the horrific similarity between this and another piece of propaganda that I learned about. A thread
— A Girl Has No Name (@monicam_mendez) June 15, 2019
The icing (no pun intended) on the cake is, the posts arrive on the heels of news earlier this week that more than 5,000 migrants have been quarantined for exposure to mumps and chicken pox. Where are they in the propaganda pics?