ICE leave imperial ‘death cards’ behind

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) paramilitaries are leaving custom-made ace of spades ‘death cards’ at the scene of migrant snatch operations. The ghoulish practice has imperial origins. US troops used to stuff cards into the mouths of the Vietnamese dead. The practice – consider yourself trigger warned here, please – was even filmed for use in official military propaganda.

The truth is this isn’t the first example of long-ago wars inflecting US immigration policy. America’s imperial past and present is so deeply interwoven into Trumpian policy that we don’t always see it. Yet these cards are one of several crystal-clear examples lately.

ICE leave death cards

The Intercept’s Nick Turse picked up the story on 3 February. It appears to have originally been reported on 22 January 2025 by Latino community organisation Voces Unidas. After a snatch mission in Eagle Country, Colorado, relatives searching for their kidnapped family members found the cards at the scene:

After detaining 10 Latino community members, ICE agents left ace of spades cards—widely known as the “death card”—inside the abandoned vehicles. The cards, later found by family members, clearly identify ICE’s Denver Field Office.

The US used the ace of spades design because it supposedly had particular cultural power in Vietnam.

As Turse explained:

During the Vietnam War, U.S. troops regularly adorned Vietnamese corpses with “death cards” — either an ace of spades or a custom-printed business card claiming credit for their kills.

Adding:

A 1966 entry in the Congressional Record noted that due to supposed Vietnamese superstitions regarding the ace of spades, “the U.S. Playing Card Co. had been furnishing thousands of these cards free to U.S. servicemen in Vietnam who requested them.”

After Vietnam, as Voces Unidas pointed out, the cards were adopted:

by white supremacist groups to demean people of color.

On the face of it, this makes a lot of sense. ICE’s recruiting strategy is less about nods to racism and more about openly using fascist imagery, mottosm and even songs to attract recruits who align with a mission to ethnically purify the US.

Long history of racial violence

Alex Sánchez, president and CEO of Voces Unidas said:

We are disgusted by ICE’s actions in Eagle County. Leaving a racist death card behind after targeting Latino workers is deliberate intimidation rooted in a long history of racial violence.

He added:

This is an abuse of power, and it has no place in any society that claims to value human dignity.

Sanchez said family members of the disappeared had the cards in their possession. He confirmed they appeared custom-made and meant to terrify ICE’s targets:

These were not from a doctored deck of cards. These were designed with this legacy in mind. They were printed on some sort of stock paper and cut in the dimensions of a card.

Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security deigned to explain the cards.

The term ‘imperial boomerang’ has used liberally to describe what is happening in the US – and correctly so. Trump’s war on immigration is a cover for a war on the left and on migrant labour. He seeks to both create an enemy and eliminate rivals, not just at home but also abroad, as we’ve seen with Venezuela and Iran.

But there is more to it. Let’s not forget that a senior Border Patrol official invoked the Confederacy – the slave-owning losers of the Civil War – in a recently discovered email chain.

In truth, the whole spectacle is alive with fascist nostalgia about lost wars. It feels like fascists – many of whom are clearly now in ICE – are trying to correct various imperial and colonial emasculations through racist violence. Trump has given them the permission, the weapons and the authority to do so. At the very least, they are drawing on those vengeful energies.

From the War on Terror to the Confederate fantasy of a ‘lost cause’ and, now, Vietnam, the ghosts of America’s violent past are restless.

Featured image via Voces Unidas