The lines between politics, branding, and internet culture have blurred in today’s America—nowhere more vividly than in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis and the state’s Republican Party have turned immigration enforcement into both policy and spectacle. Their latest venture, a new immigrant detention center dubbed the “Deportation Depot,” has ignited controversy not just for its mission, but for the way it’s been promoted and marketed—complete with merchandise that mimicked the iconic Home Depot logo, and a social media strategy echoing the irreverent, meme-driven ethos of the Trump administration.
It all began last week when DeSantis announced plans to convert the shuttered Baker Correctional Institution, nestled between Tallahassee and Jacksonville, into a state-run immigration detention center capable of holding up to 1,300 people. “This will be operational soon; it is not going to take forever, but we are also not rushing to do this right this day,” DeSantis said during the unveiling, as reported by The Independent. He emphasized, “The reason for this is not to just house people indefinitely. We want to process, stage, and then return illegal aliens to their home country. That is the name of the game.”
Within hours, the Florida GOP rolled out a line of hats, T-shirts, and mugs emblazoned with “THE DEPORT DEPOT,” a cheeky riff on Home Depot’s trademark orange square and blocky stencil font. The merchandise was clearly designed to catch eyes—and stir the pot. But just two days after the launch, the items vanished from the party’s digital storefront. The reason? Home Depot objected to what it described as unauthorized use of its branding. “We don’t allow any organization to use our branding or logo for their commercial purposes,” Sarah McDonald, director of public affairs for Home Depot, told The Independent.
Despite the swift takedown, the episode was emblematic of a broader trend: the fusion of political messaging, internet meme culture, and commercial branding to promote hardline immigration policies. The “Deport Depot” merchandise followed a similar July campaign featuring “Alligator Alcatraz” gear—t-shirts, baseball caps, and beer koozies referencing the Florida Everglades detention center, complete with images of giant reptiles patrolling a prison facility.
But the marketing blitz is just one facet of a larger, nationwide strategy. According to NPR, the Trump administration’s White House and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) social media accounts have, for months, been churning out memes, AI-generated images, and recruitment posters celebrating aggressive immigration enforcement. These posts are often laced with irony, nostalgia, and provocative humor, and are designed to appeal to supporters while provoking outrage from critics.
One White House post from July promoted the “Alligator Alcatraz” facility, while another, in late March, used AI to transform a photograph of a Dominican woman crying during her arrest into an animation in the style of Studio Ghibli. The caption? “The arrests will continue. The memes will continue.” This kind of trolling, experts say, is a deliberate strategy. “They have the power to define who is visible, who is not, what is acceptable and what is not,” Roland Meyer, a professor of digital cultures and arts, told NPR. “They also kind of control the discourse, and also anticipate the reaction to their postings.”
Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, was blunt in her response to media criticism: “If the media needs a history lesson on the brave men and women who blazed the trails, forded the rivers, and forged this Republic from the sweat of their brow, we are happy to send them a history textbook.” She added, “This administration is unapologetically proud of American history and American heritage. Get used to it.”
The social media campaign is more than just memes. Recent posts have included recruitment drives to hire 10,000 new ICE agents, using retro-style Uncle Sam posters, patriotic art, and videos of armed agents carrying out raids. Many of these images evoke a white-centered, nationalist vision of America. For instance, DHS posted John Gast’s 1872 painting “American Progress,” a work closely tied to the 19th-century concept of “manifest destiny”—the belief that white settlers were destined to expand across the continent. The painting was captioned, “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.”
Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, sees a disturbing pattern. “The images conjure a narrative that ‘we had a wonderful white civilization and culture that has been decimated by these people who don’t belong here, who just happen to not be white people for the most part,’” she told NPR. She added that using such art to inspire ICE recruitment is troubling because “the whole thing is framed as ‘white people need to reclaim their territory.’”
Other posts have drawn from Christian nationalist themes, featuring Bible verses and framing border enforcement as a battle between good and evil. One video, posted in late July, showed helmeted border agents in military fatigues, overlaid with the biblical line: “THE WICKED FLEE WHEN NO MAN PURSUETH; BUT THE RIGHTEOUS ARE BOLD AS A LION.” The caption targeted “every criminal illegal alien in America,” warning, “Darkness is no longer your ally. You represent an existential threat to the citizens of the United States, and US Border Patrol’s Special Operations Group will stop at nothing to hunt you down.”
This blend of nostalgia, aggression, and internet-savvy trolling has proven polarizing. Supporters praise the irreverence and see it as a refreshing break from political correctness. Critics, however, condemn the cruelty, racial undertones, and what they view as the normalization of extremist rhetoric. As Ryan Milner, a professor of communication at the College of Charleston, put it, “Attention is the currency. It’s clicks, it’s views, it’s shares. It doesn’t matter if somebody is arguing with you in the comments or if somebody is supporting you. If you have comments, if you have shares, if you have likes, if you have coverage from NPR, that’s all good.”
The administration’s approach has also drawn ire from artists and musicians whose work was used without permission in government posts. The British singer Jess Glynne, for example, denounced the White House’s use of her song in a deportation video, saying, “My music is about love, unity and spreading positivity—never about division or hate.” The band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club issued a cease-and-desist after their rendition of “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” was used in a DHS video. And the Kinkade Family Foundation disavowed the use of a Thomas Kinkade painting by the agency.
Back in Florida, the “Deport Depot” and “Alligator Alcatraz” campaigns have also faced legal and ethical challenges. A federal court recently halted new construction at the Everglades facility after environmental groups warned it threatened local wetlands and wildlife. Meanwhile, lawyers and detainees report worsening conditions inside, including a possible Covid-19 outbreak—though the Department of Homeland Security insists there is “no widespread disease circulating at Alligator Alcatraz.”
As the debate rages on, one thing is clear: the intersection of politics, branding, and internet culture is reshaping how immigration policy is communicated, contested, and experienced in America. Whether this strategy ultimately succeeds—or backfires—remains to be seen, but the battle for hearts, minds, and clicks is very much underway.
