Earlier this year, the Supreme Court’s ruling that the federal government—not Texas —had ultimate authority over border enforcement led to a tense standoff, which turbocharged violent rhetoric and civil war fantasies online. That ruling, which DHS cited as a driver behind the uptick in anti-immigration threats, drew an array of extremists who traveled convoy style to the border to “support” Texas law enforcement. As that was playing out, FBI agents said they disrupted a plot by militiamen to shoot border patrol agents and immigrants and “start a war.”
And last month, Trump and his running mate, senator JD Vance of Ohio, pounced on a debunked story, stemming from a rumor on Facebook, claiming that Haitian migrants were stealing and eating people’s pets in the town of Springfield, Ohio. City officials were bombarded by hoax bomb threats and death threats, forcing some schools and municipal buildings to temporarily shut down. Proud Boys and Neo-Nazis from the group Blood Tribe also paraded through Springfield.
“We’ve certainly seen in the last couple years the spike in threats from anti-immigrant extremists,” says Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s program on extremism. “We see this as one of the easiest mobilizing concepts for the right-wing ecosystem … it certainly shouldn’t be a surprise that we see the foot soldiers mobilizing in response to these repeated calls to arms.”
The intel fits into a broader trend of the right-wing—which was once typically supportive of all law enforcement—villainizing certain agencies. For example, the FBI has been targeted with threats for its involvement in January 6 prosecutions.
Recently released FBI data also shows that hate crimes targeting Latinos—who have been broadly scapegoated by anti-immigrant “invasion” rhetoric—also surged by 11 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, continuing a disturbing years-long upwards trend.
Anti-immigrant sentiment is driving threats against “critical government infrastructure,” and leading to US officials being targeted in their homes, according to another security memo, authored in April. Violent threats against “all immigration-related targets” had tripled in January compared to previous months, the memo said. In April, several immigration-related court rulings reportedly caused a spike in calls for the “mass murder of US judges.”
“Many groups working on immigration rights and advocacy in recent years have been raising the alarm in terms of this nativist rhetoric,” says Jesse Franzblau, a senior analyst at the National Immigration Justice Center. “Particularly from members of Congress.”
“It’s nothing new,” Franzblau says, “blaming immigrants for the social ills of the country. But it has grown to a new extreme and it seems more coordinated. There’s a lot of money going into developing these talking points, and pushing these completely dangerous narratives about immigrant communities.” There’s broad consensus among economists that immigration, in the long-term, revitalizes local economies.
DHS projects that overall threats against court officers and court facilities will remain on the rise throughout 2025, the memos show. Those targeting federal judges rose 52 percent last year, one memo says, while threats against court officers effectively doubled.
“Threat actors include domestic violent extremists (DVEs) motivated by political and policy-related grievances and criminal actors who threaten critical government infrastructure and personnel, both at their workplaces and private residences,” it says, adding that incidents involving “hoaxes,” “swatting,” and “doxing” have affected a “wide array of federal and state judicial figures.”
The April memo also credits “immigration-related grievances” with a “spate of swatting incidents” against members of Congress earlier this year, capping off a 7 percent increase in investigations by Capitol Police into threats to US officials.
