How ICE & Whole Milk is a Route to White Supremacy

On the morning of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I decided to skip my usual Pilates and morning walk due to the aftermath of the snowstorm in Freehold Borough, my hometown, the day before. 

However, I made afternoon plans to visit the local public library to focus on career and content work. 

After I finished getting dressed, I was scrolling on Instagram when I saw a note status from my friend, Omar, about an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid sighting at one of the restaurants in Downtown Freehold. 

I got nervous, already aware of the violent ICE raids going on across the United States, including the murders of Keith Porter Jr and Renee Nicole Good.

There have been ICE sightings in Freehold Borough over the last few months. However, it was worse this past Monday because they were all over.

An hour later, after finishing a Zoom meeting, I was about to pack my MacBook Air, iPad, and my usual library essentials into my work bag when I received a text from Omar. He said that ICE “is getting out of control.” 

My instincts told me to check Omar’s Instagram. When I clicked on his story, there I saw a photo of four ICE agents arresting a man. Omar captioned the photo in big letters, “ICE IN FREEHOLD OFF OF CONOVER ST AND MARCY ST PLEASE STAY SAFE EVERYONE” and added “also spotted in the parking lot of Juice House in front of Court Jester.”

I was shocked, but in the next post, my eyes widened in fear and sorrow. It was a photo of an ICE officer arresting a man in front of 7-Eleven, one that I frequent once in a blue moon for coffee. (Note: I was not able to obtain a photo of it on Instagram, but I found a video on Facebook.)

I was horrified, but I needed to warn everyone, so I screenshotted the previous post on Omar’s Instagram story and posted it on my Instagram story, urging everyone to be safe. 

I went on Facebook to check for more updates on ICE in Freehold. Numerous pictures and videos of ICE officers running around at convenience stores and local businesses. These are places I’ve visited and walked past, including a plaza across the street from the YMCA Recreational Center, where I attended summer camp from ages 7 to 13. 

It broke my heart seeing this. Growing up in Freehold Borough, a predominantly Spanish-speaking area, the majority of my classmates from K-12 and summer camp peers were Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), and Latino. It was always normal for me. 

However, reality became intense for my BIPOC and Latino peers when United States President Donald Trump was first elected into office in 2016. Trump, whose first and second presidential campaigns were rooted in strict anti-immigration beliefs, imposed laws such as the Muslim Ban and, more recently, enforcing ICE agents across the nation, arresting and detaining not only Latino people, but BIPOC as well. 

While the aggressive raids of ICE officers in the United States continue, there has been an increasing amount of ad campaigns for whole milk from the Trump Administration. 

On Wednesday, Jan. 14th, Trump signed the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act into law. This law marks the return of whole and 2 percent milk to schools, overturning Obama-era limits on higher-fat milk options, according to PBS.

Days before the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act was enacted into law, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) posted on X (formerly Twitter) a photo of Trump with a milk moustache, with a glass of milk in front of him. The words “The Milk Moustache Is Back” and “Drink Whole Milk” are plastered on the photo.

“Drink up, America. #DrinkWholeMilk🥛,” said the USDA in the caption of their post. 

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Jan. 14, the White House posted a photo of President Trump holding two crates of milk with the phrase “Make Whole Milk Great Again” above him. The post was captioned with “Make Whole Milk Great Again.🥛.”

Trump’s milk moustache is a reference to the well-known “Got Milk?” ad campaign, a series of ads launched in 1997 that featured celebrities and athletes with milk moustaches and glasses of milk. Also, Trump holding the crates of milk is reminiscent of the milkman, a prominent figure in the late 1800s to early 1900s. Their job was to deliver glass jars of milk to houses daily. 

The rise of whole milk campaigns may not sound alarming to the average U.S. citizen. However, the current resurgence of whole milk and the history of milk in the United States is political, even in alignment with white supremacy. 

In a March 2024 POLITICO article, “How Raw Milk Went from a Whole Foods Staple to a Conservative Signal,” by Marc Novicoff, he cited the Liberals’ dwindling interest in raw milk and Conservatives, realizing that raw milk fits into the state of the world in which Republicans have skepticism towards the credentialed experts, as causes to how raw milk went from Liberal to Conservative.

Along with Conservatives and Republicans comes white supremacy in the arena of whole milk through #MilkTwitter. It was a hashtag that was circling Twitter (now X) back in 2017, where racist trolls would express bigotry and racism. 

#MilkTwitter was mentioned in Jared Holt’s HuffPost article titled “The Troubling Link Between Milk and Racism,” which stated that white supremacists are “co-opting cow’s milk as a symbol of their belief that white people are wholesome and pure.” 

This article features Iselin Gambert, a professor of legal writing at The George Washington University Law School, who co-wrote a paper arguing that milk has long been a symbol and tool of white supremacy.

Gambert said that the issues in milk’s history, including how people of color are more likely to report symptoms of lactose intolerance, add to the significance of white supremacy.

Now, when you look at the violent actions that ICE agents are enforcing on Latino and BIPOC, and the return of whole milk in public schools, and the Trump Administration’s towering whole milk campaign, it is en route to white supremacy.