Mugshots on the White House Lawn: A Warning From History
History shows where public shaming by the state leads — and it's never justice.
A Shocking Display at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
On the morning of April 28, Washington reporters arrived at the White House to an unsettling sight. Along the north driveway—known as "Pebble Beach," where TV correspondents give their live reports—stood roughly 100 placards, each bearing a mugshot-like photo of an individual under the bold header “ARRESTED.” Axios broke this news in the early hours. Instead of names, the posters simply labeled each person “illegal alien,” followed by a brief description of an alleged crime: “first-degree murder,” “rape of a child,” “distribution of fentanyl,” and so on. These were, according to a White House official, “some of the worst illegal immigrants and criminals the Trump administration has arrested since taking office.”
It was not a coincidence that this spectacle coincided with President Donald Trump’s 100th day back in office (this Thursday, May 1). In fact, staffers had begun installing the posters late Sunday night as part of a calculated PR gambit. The goal, an official told Axios, was explicit: make sure the wall of mugshots would show up in the background of television news shots. By dawn, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, was tweeting a video of the poster-lined lawn with the chipper greeting, “Good Morning from The White House!”
This was not a normal morning in a functioning liberal democracy; it was something else entirely, something with an authoritarian echo.
“Law and Order” or Political Theater?
White House officials defended the unprecedented display as a hard-nosed celebration of the administration’s immigration crackdown. With Trump’s 100-day milestone at hand, aides boasted that he was simply keeping campaign promises on border security. “You can expect the White House to tout the many promises made on the campaign trail that have been fulfilled in the president's first 100 days,” one official told Axios.
To supporters of the administration, the message was clear and welcome: after what they saw as years of lax enforcement, the government was finally naming and shaming dangerous foreigners in plain view of the American people. At an early-morning press briefing, “Border Czar” Tom Homan praised the president’s tough policies. He pointedly accused Trump’s predecessor of having “unsecured the border on purpose,” contrasting that with the new regime’s ruthlessness. The administration even released an online dossier of all 100 individuals featured, complete with photos and rap sheets, to underscore the claim that each one was a menace now removed from U.S. streets. In short, the White House’s official line was that this was law-and-order in action.
But outside the Trump loyalist bubble, the reactions were far less positive. Seasoned Washington correspondents struggled to recall any precedent for a president literally papering the people’s lawn with the faces of those he vilifies. Legal and human rights observers noted that the mugshot subjects were awaiting due process or immigration proceedings – yet here they were being effectively used as props in a political tableau. Immigration advocates decried the move as a dehumanizing stunt, arguing it painted all undocumented immigrants as violent criminals by cherry-picking a heinous handful. Some critics drew an even darker connection: “authoritarian propaganda.” After all, the display’s overt aim was to instill fear. The administration wanted immigrants to see those photos and think: This could be you – your face, your name erased and replaced with ‘illegal alien,’ your life summed up by a crime on a poster, shamed before the entire nation.
Notably, media outlets outside the pro-Trump orbit framed the event as provocative and controversial by design. Axios called it “sure-to-be-controversial” and described it as a “provocative… gambit” to spotlight Trump’s agenda. The Independent quoted a White House source openly admitting the hope was for the mugshots to appear in TV news broadcasts, thereby maximizing their exposure. Many observers could not help but recall images from history – those black-and-white photos of despots proudly displaying their trussed-up enemies. The initial political blowback in Washington split along familiar lines: Trump’s allies cheered the toughness, while opponents expressed outrage and disgust.
Even some law-and-order conservatives voiced unease at the spectacle. Was this still about crime, or had it lurched into demagoguery? After all, the administration’s message didn’t stop at “we will enforce the law” – it effectively said “we will make a public example of you with no due process.” Such rhetoric, while red meat to a political base, carries dangerous undertones. History offers many examples of regimes that began to unravel the rule of law under the banner of “security,” employing eerily similar tactics to enforce obedience. The scene hearkened back to some of the 20th century’s darkest chapters – when leaders used prisoners’ images as instruments of intimidation and control. It’s a comparison no American ever expected to draw in their own country, yet here we are.
Authoritarian Echoes: Mugshots as Tools of Intimidation
To be clear, the United States is not Stalin’s Soviet Union or Pol Pot’s Cambodia. But these tactics of intimidation and fear are rooted in propaganda and autocratic crackdown. Authoritarian regimes throughout history have famously used images of detained “enemies” for propaganda effect – to instill fear in the public and to glorify the regime’s iron-fisted strength. The White House’s mugshot montage has unmistakable parallels to these tactics. Consider a few historical examples:
Stalin’s USSR (1930s): Joseph Stalin orchestrated show trials of alleged “enemies of the people” and splashed their confessions across state media. Defendants, often loyal communists tortured into false admissions, were paraded before cameras in courtroom docks, heads bowed. The Soviet press printed photos of these broken men to cement their guilt in the public mind – a clear message that traitors will be exposed and eradicated. Stalin understood the power of images; his regime even went so far as to doctor photographs to erase purged officials from history. The spectacle of the accused – faces gaunt in NKVD mugshots or on trial – served to terrorize the populace into submission. Neighbors would recognize the faces now labeled “wrecker” or “spy,” and absorb the lesson: trust no one, dissidence is death.
Khmer Rouge Cambodia (1975–1979): In Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge converted a former high school into the notorious S-21 prison (Tuol Sleng). There, in a grimly systematic process, every new prisoner was photographed upon arrival – a stark, numbered mugshot of men, women, even children, often visibly terrified. Thousands of these haunting photos survive today, each one the prelude to torture and execution. At the time, these images were not shown to the public; they were meticulously archived by the regime. But their purpose was still propagandistic: by reducing human beings to catalogued mugshots and forced “confessions,” the Khmer Rouge created an apparatus of total terror. The very act of taking those photographs signaled to the prisoners that they were already as good as dead and documented for posterity as traitors to the revolution. The psychological impact extended beyond the prison walls—Khmer Rouge cadres knew that to be arrested meant your photo would join the gruesome gallery of “enemies,” an outcome that kept many in terrified obedience.
Nazi Germany (1933–1945): The Nazi regime pioneered modern techniques of dehumanization, including the use of identification photos for control. The Gestapo and SS compiled endless files of mugshots of those deemed enemies of the Aryan Volk: political dissidents, resistance fighters, Jews, Roma, LGBTQ individuals, and others. In the concentration camps, prisoners were often forced to pose for ID photographs in striped uniforms, a practice intended to strip away their dignity and identity. These images were not splashed on public billboards—Nazi propaganda preferred more caricatured and pseudoscientific imagery to incite hatred—but the very existence of mugshots-as-record helped the regime industrialize its persecution. Knowing the state had your name, face, and “criminal” file instilled paralyzing fear. In some cases, Nazi authorities did publicly display or circulate pictures of captured partisans and “criminals” to warn others. For instance, occupied territories saw “Wanted” posters with photos of resistance members; failing to report them could mean you’d be on the next poster. The Nazi message was clear: we see you, we have you on file, and we can and will destroy you.
Pinochet’s Chile (1973–1990): After General Augusto Pinochet’s coup in Chile, thousands of political opponents were rounded up. Many were photographed by the military regime’s secret police (DINA) during processing – haunting headshots that in countless cases became the last images ever taken of them. Over 3,000 people were killed or “disappeared” under Pinochet’s rule and some 38,000 were held as political prisoners, usually under brutal torture. Families of the missing would later clutch those very mugshots in protests, demanding the whereabouts of loved ones who had vanished into the regime’s dungeons. Pinochet’s government rarely broadcast these photos (preferring denial and silence about its dirty war), but it did occasionally publicize the faces of detained leftists to boast of quelling “subversives.” Every Chilean understood that appearing in one of the junta’s images – a bruised face on state TV or a mugshot in police files – could be a death sentence. The regime thus weaponized photographs in two ways: privately, as a record to efficiently track and eliminate dissidents, and publicly, as a sporadic tool to trumpet victories over “terrorists” and to instill a general climate of fear.
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (1979–2003): Perhaps no episode illustrates the tyrant’s use of terror theater better than Saddam’s infamous Ba’ath Party purge of 1979. In a dramatic meeting convened just days after he took power, Saddam had dozens of top party officials accused of disloyalty. One by one, the men were dragged out of the hall as their names were called, in full view of their colleagues. The entire proceeding was filmed. A sobbing Saddam, feigning anguish at what he “had” to do, watched as alleged traitors were led away to torture and execution. This snuff film of a cabinet meeting was then distributed throughout Iraq. Ordinary Iraqis and officials alike were forced to watch the grainy footage of men who only yesterday were powerful figures, now shattered and hauled off in chains. The message could not have been more blunt: no one is safe, trust only Saddam, or you’ll be next. In later years, Saddam’s regime routinely broadcast forced confessions of people accused of spying or treason. On state television, Iraqis saw battered “criminals” admitting to fantastic plots, eyes downcast, sometimes reading scripted apologies to “President Saddam.” These televised mugshot-confessions were designed to squash dissent and create an atmosphere of paranoia. Citizens knew that if the dictator wanted, their face could be the next one on TV, branded as an enemy of the state.
In all of these cases, the photograph of a prisoner was never just a neutral record. It was a weapon. Totalitarian and authoritarian governments wielded mugshots and images of detainees to send a broader message to the population: oppose us, and this is what awaits you. The public display of an enemy’s face served to isolate and dehumanize that person (making it easier to justify whatever came next) and to psychologically intimidate everyone else. When the White House on Monday festooned its lawn with the faces of people it calls villains, it tapped into this dark tradition of visual propaganda. It’s a tradition fundamentally at odds with American ideals of due process, individual dignity, and unbiased justice.
The Threshold of Democratic Decay
It is tempting, in the daily tsunami of news, to dismiss the mugshot lawn episode as just another partisan publicity stunt – distasteful, but ultimately merely political theater. That would be a grave mistake. What we saw on the White House grounds this week was the presidency continuing to adopt the aesthetics and tactics of authoritarianism. Democracies can and certainly do enforce their laws, even harshly at times; but democracies do not typically stage-manage public humiliation displays in front of the seat of government. This crosses a line of decorum and principle. It’s not about sympathy for the criminals in those photos – if they are truly guilty of those heinous crimes, justice should be served through courts. It’s about the precedent of a leader using human beings’ likenesses as billboards in a propaganda campaign. It’s about how a government sees its role: as an impartial enforcer of laws, or as a propagandist projecting power.
Take this as a sign that the line between governance and spectacle has blurred. The administration explicitly wanted to “influence the narrative” by leveraging these images. In doing so, it treated due process and individual circumstances as inconveniences to be brushed aside. Each poster reduced a complex human story (however unsympathetic the person might be) to a one-dimensional caricature: a scowling face and a crime in bold letters. This is governing by caricature and fear. It’s a tactic straight from the playbook of regimes we Americans have long criticized as ‘undemocratic.’ Indeed, immigrants who once fled dictatorships have reported a jarring sense of déjà vu in recent months: “Constantly on edge, waiting for the next thing to break,” said one Venezuelan exile of watching the new administration’s moves.
History seldom repeats in precisely the same way, but it often rhymes. The images on the White House lawn rhyme unmistakably with those from some of history’s darkest moments. They rhyme with the propaganda of regimes that regarded the rule of law as a nuisance and public shaming as a legitimate tool of statecraft. The United States is, for now, a free republic with guarantees of liberty. But under an autocrat, those guarantees erode exponentially if given enough time. A poster here, a purge there, and before long the unthinkable starts to seem normal and unstoppable.
It is urgent that Americans of all political persuasions recognize the gravity of this moment. This isn’t about left or right, conservative or liberal – it’s about the basic norms of a democratic society. A government that feels empowered to plaster faces on a lawn today could just as easily plaster faces on wanted posters of political opponents tomorrow. One day it’s “illegal aliens,” the next it could be journalists, judges, opposition candidates, or protesters. When leaders start using the trappings of autocracy – the threatening rhetoric, the public enemies list, the orchestrated scenes of triumph over the “other” – our democracy is in peril.
Seventy-five years ago, as the free world celebrated victory over fascism, President Harry Truman insisted that America’s leadership would be moral, not just military. “We believe in the dignity of man,” he said, “in his freedom and his equality before the law.” It falls to us now to uphold that credo. We must reject the transformation of justice into stagecraft and of human beings into mere poster fodder. If we fail to do so, the mugshots on the lawn will appear trivial when we conduct a post-mortem analysis of our failed democracy. The gravity of this cannot be overstated: when the White House starts to look like the Ministry of Fear, it’s time to act quickly and decisively.