by Daniel Johnson
October 19, 2025
Behind the scenes, the Trump administration has increasingly engaged in what internet users call ‘shitposting’
After the Department of Homeland Security’s official X account posted a video featuring a group of Black teenagers that many have called out as fake, Kristi Noem, the director of the department, was called out by Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) the representative demanded that the video be deleted, or Noem would have to answer for the apparent digital manipulation in Congress.
According to Raw Story, on Oct. 17, the DHS posted the video, which depicts several young Black men posturing in a park, with a caption that conveys that the group was openly threatening Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. However, it was not long until users on social media found the original video, wherein the threat, issued in jest, was actually aimed at Iran, not ICE.
The DHS captioned their version of the video, “FAFO,” that acronym is an abbreviation for a popular Black American saying, ‘F— around and find out.’ The caption continued, “If you threaten or lay hands on our law enforcement officers we will hunt you down and you will find out, really quick. We’ll see you cowards soon.”
Swalwell, for his part, immediately connected Noem to the post, noting in a now-deleted post quoting the department’s video that the video is fake. “Kristi – DELETE THIS TWEET or answer for it in Congress. It’s FAKE,” Swalwell wrote. “You’re the Queen of Photoshopping. This is the same smear you pulled on Kilmar Garcia. You’re destroying these kids’ lives over a doctored video. Take it down.”
The person believed to be the original creator of the video allegedly responded, in a post shared by Democratic congressional candidate Danny Glover, that he was shocked that something that was created as a joke was actually being used by the federal government as a scare tactic.
“I saw the caption and I was like ‘I didn’t do that!’” He noted. “I’ve still got the video saved on my drafts months ago on TikTok. Here’s the f—– part: the federal government is involved with something that I didn’t do. What?”As this video seems to indicate, the expansion of artificial intelligence’s role in the DHS’s acceleration of immigration enforcement is occurring on two fronts.
Primarily, out in the field, as CNN reported, this takes the shape of a hyper-efficient process backed by Palantir’s artificial intelligence suite of tools referred to as ImmigrationOS, with the end goal of producing what Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons previously described as a process with ruthless efficiency. “Like Prime, but with human beings,” he noted at the Border Security Expo held in Phoenix back in April.
Behind the scenes, the Trump administration has increasingly engaged in what internet users call “shitposting” or as Sarah Jeong described it in her analysis of the state of American politics for The Verge, “Shitposting is incoherence in the form of humor, a sort of nihilism that refuses to engage with meaning, words, or reality. Shitposting is a mockery of seriousness,” and as she notes, the Trump administration’s use of this tactic indicates that “meaningless cruelty” is the point of their engagement.
This bent towards shitposting, as she explains it, certainly seems to be evidenced by a federal department using artificial intelligence to essentially digitally frame a content creator’s joke as a threat. It is also evidenced by Trump’s posting of a meme referencing the film “Apocalypse Now” as a threat, gesturing towards his intention to wage war on the City of Chicago, vis-à-vis the deployment of the National Guard earlier in 2025.
As The Washington Post noted, the building out of surveillance, including technology that allows for the identification of individuals by their irises or facial features and to monitor their cellphone activity, creates massive concerns over a surveillance apparatus that will inevitably shatter the tension between liberty and security by violating the Constitutional rights of both American citizens and immigrants.
As Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) told the outlet, “I’m extremely concerned about how ICE will use spyware, facial recognition and other technology to further trample on the rights of Americans and anyone who Donald Trump labels as an enemy.”
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