Several hours after the White House post, the Department of Homeland Security put up its own Halo image with the message “Destroy the Flood,” and a link to the ICE recruitment page.

Comparing immigrants in the US to a parasitic alien life form that infects and annihilates advanced societies is not deeply offensive, it’s also rooted in the worst of human history: As seen in the untermenschen of the Holocaust and “cockroaches” in Rwanda, to name a couple recent examples, dehumanizing the “other” so you can more easily inflict cruelty, injustice, and horrors upon them is hardly a new technique, and the US government’s messaging was not subtle.