In an apparent attempt to “jump on the World Cup bandwagon,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published what Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan described as an “anti-immigrant” social media post, but in doing so, “completely undermined” its own “far-right message,” as well as a core claim frequently made by President Donald Trump.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup, held jointly by the United States, Canada and Mexico, got off to an “unmistakably racist start,” Hasan argued in an analysis published Saturday in Zeteo, with participants from Somalia, Iraq and Uzbekistan facing challenges when entering the United States.
On Friday, the official DHS account on X published a photograph of three non-white American soccer players with the caption: “Defend the Homeland; One Nation. One Homeland. One Team,” and another caption that read “OUR SOIL.”
The social media post, however, stood at direct odds with the DHS’ messaging, as well as the president’s.
“On Friday, the Trump administration took that racism and xenophobia to the next level, but, thankfully, made a fool of itself in the process,” Hasan wrote.
“The funniest part is that the image itself completely undermines the accompanying far-right message. It is a picture of three non-white American players (Chris Richards, Sergiño Dest, Folarin Balogun), one of whom (Balogun) scored twice in the USMNT’s 4-1 demolition of Paraguay at the start of the tournament.”
Hasan continued, “Balogun is an American by virtue of.. wait for it… birthright citizenship.”
Trump has long tried to overturn the constitutional right of birthright citizenship, and has frequently repeated the false claim that the United States was the “only country in the world” to have such a right.
Beyond DHS appearing to undermine one of Trump’s top priorities, Hasan also took aim at the staffers running the DHS’ social media accounts.
“First, what a bizarre slogan for a host nation of the World Cup to use while describing a home game: ‘Defend the Homeland’? As if other teams playing at the World Cup are… invaders?” Hasan wrote.
“Second, notice how the DHS tagline bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the Nazi slogan ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer’ (‘one people, one realm, one leader’). I have written elsewhere about the way in which the Trump administration’s social media accounts ‘can’t stop posting Nazi imagery and memes… and leaning heavily into fascist aesthetics.’”
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