ICE Prosecutor in Dallas Runs White Supremacist X Account
The Observer has identified the operator of “GlomarResponder,” an overtly racist social media account, as ICE Assistant Chief Counsel James Rodden, based on an overwhelming number of biographical details matched through publicly available documents, other social media activity, and courtroom...
www.texasobserver.org
Extremism
ICE Prosecutor in Dallas Runs White Supremacist X Account
The Observer has identified the operator of “GlomarResponder,” an overtly racist social media account, as ICE Assistant Chief Counsel James Rodden, based on an overwhelming number of biographical details matched through publicly available documents, other social media activity, and courtroom observation.
by Steven Monacelli
February 19, 2025, 4:02 PM, CST
Fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids began to spread the day after President Donald Trump was inaugurated for the second time. Posts on social media and Reddit claimed that ICE had already been spotted in the Dallas neighborhood of Oak Cliff, where Latino immigrants began to settle in large numbers in the 1970s and have profoundly shaped the culture of the vibrant community.
That same Tuesday morning, an X account with over 17,000 followers named GlomarResponder made an ominous post. “Yeah, I’m in a courthouse wating [sic] on warrants,” GlomarResponder wrote. “Turns out there’s a lot of bytch work to be done to make mass deportations happen.” One day prior, GlomarResponder had posted that he “Can confirm all of those,” regarding a list of cities where ICE was expected to begin deportation operations the next day. “May have a betting pool to see who can guess which one I’m at on any particular day, based on the news,” GlomarResponder wrote.
These were but the latest posts that GlomarResponder has made over the years that suggest the operator of the account is an ICE employee. GlomarResponder has also routinely expressed blatantly racist and anti-immigrant views. Through an extensive review of GlomarResponder’s X posts, publicly available documents, and other social media profiles and posts, the Texas Observer has identified the operator of GlomarResponder as James “Jim” Joseph Rodden, a 44-year-old who works as an assistant chief counsel for ICE in the Dallas area. Rodden represents the agency in immigration court hearings where judges decide whether an individual is removed from the country.
Since GlomarResponder was first created in 2012, the account has posted hateful, xenophobic, and pro-fascist content. “America is a White nation, founded by Whites. … Our country should favor us,” GlomarResponder wrote last month. “All blacks are foreign to my people, dumb fukk,” the account posted in September of last year. “Freedom of association hasn’t existed in this country since 1964 at the absolute latest,” GlomarResponder wrote four months prior, further clarifying the post was referring to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a reply to a comment. “I’m not a commie, I’m a fascist,” GlomarResponder posted a couple weeks later. “Fascists solve communist problems. Get your insults right, retard.”
In August, GlomarResponder posted: “‘Migrants’ are all criminals.” Two months later, GlomarResponder shared an image that reads: “It is our holy duty to guard against the foreign hordes.” Some GlomarResponder posts evoke anti-immigrant violence: “Nobody is proposing feeding migrants into tree shredders,” the account posted in March 2024. “Yet. Give it a few more weeks at this level of invasion, and that will be the moderate position.” And in January: “My WWII vet grandfather didn’t get a chance to kill asians, so he volunteered for Korea. He’d be asking for a short term job with ICE kicking doors and swinging a baton.”
Rodden’s ICE employment is confirmed by federal court records, background interviews, and Observer courtroom visits.
A resident of Frisco, Rodden has previously lived in Pennsylvania, Northern Virginia, and North Carolina, according to county voter registration, private data broker sites, and property records. Rodden attended Penn State and Wake Forest University law school. A James J. Rodden possesses a license to practice law in Washington, D.C., which allows representation of ICE in Texas immigration court and was granted within a year of Rodden’s graduation from Wake Forest. In court filings, Rodden has claimed to have worked in federal government for a number of years prior to his ICE job. What appears to be his LinkedIn lists prior employment as a U.S. Border Patrol agent, a United States Marine Corps armorer, and a litigation clinic student at a federal public defender’s office. The Marine Corps confirmed Rodden’s service and final rank of corporal, and the Federal Public Defender’s office in Greensboro, North Carolina, confirmed his prior employment. The Border Patrol’s parent agency declined to confirm Rodden’s prior employment and denied a public records request, citing privacy and national security concerns.
The evidence that Rodden operates the GlomarResponder account includes an overwhelming number of biographical details that GlomarResponder has shared over years that align with information about Rodden, including employment history, locations lived, characteristics of a spouse, involvement in a lawsuit against the federal government, height and fashion preferences, penchants for specific phrasing, and a variety of specific interests and hobbies. The Observer confirmed these details about Rodden through other social media profiles, public records, private data broker sites, open-source investigative tools, interviews, and attendance of court hearings in which Rodden was representing ICE.
Rodden did not respond to multiple Observer requests for comment, which detailed the findings of this story, sent to his ICE email address. A call to a phone number associated with Rodden reached a man who declined to confirm his identity before hanging up. When approached in a public hallway outside the Dallas immigration court and asked to confirm receipt of the emailed requests, Rodden said only to “call [his] press office.”
An ICE spokesperson declined to confirm Rodden’s employment, and the agency declined to release personnel records for Rodden without his written permission. The spokesperson wrote in an email: “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will not comment on the substance of this article pending further investigation, to include whether the owner of the referenced ‘X’ account is a current employee. Notwithstanding, ICE holds its employees to the highest standards of professionalism and takes seriously all allegations of inappropriate conduct.”
In November 2021, a group of federal employees filed a class action lawsuit, styled James Joseph Rodden, et al. v. Dr. Anthony Fauci, over the federal employee vaccine mandate that required all federal workers to receive the COVID vaccine to keep their jobs. Per the lawsuit, Rodden was an “Assistant Chief Counsel at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” a position the Observer was able to confirm Rodden still occupies by attending Dallas immigration court and noting his name on a schedule circulated by the Dallas ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, where attorneys are generally referred to as assistant chief counsels.
On September 6, 2023, GlomarResponder wrote: “I’m party to a lawsuit where preventing transmission was the justification for a shot mandate,” referring to the COVID-19 vaccine. He later lamented, on December 12 that year, that the lawsuit had been vacated.
Lawsuit filings reveal that Rodden took a blood test as part of providing evidence of naturally acquired immunity to COVID, and a briefing submitted on behalf of Rodden and his co-plaintiffs in a similar case argues that the vaccines are “less efficacious than natural immunity in preventing reinfection.”
In posts on X, GlomarResponder has made statements that echo what Rodden asserted in the court filings. In 2023, GlomarResponder wrote that he found out he had had COVID when he “got a blood test for a lawsuit” and that his immunity was found to be “better than that of the multi-shot morons.” In a recent response to a post that described the vaccine mandate as “insane,” GlomarResponder wrote that “some of us not only said so at the time, we sued them over it.”
On January 21 of this year, the same day that GlomarResponder claimed to be waiting for warrants at a courthouse, Rodden was scheduled to be at the immigration courthouse in downtown Dallas, according to a weekly schedule document from ICE. Later that week, the Observer witnessed Rodden working at a deportation hearing, where he was representing the government agency. At this hearing, and another hearing in early February, Rodden wore a three-piece suit, cufflinks, and a watch—items GlomarReponder has posted about wearing—and appeared to be approximately 6’2”, corresponding to the height that GlomarResponder has disclosed in posts on X. He also maintained a cleanly shaved head, something GlomarResponder has recommended as “wisdom” to men who are going bald.
During the January court hearing the Observer attended, Rodden repeatedly used his phone at moments that corresponded to times GlomarResponder made posts. At the February hearing, the Observer saw Rodden scrolling through the X app on his phone and drafting a post at 1:14 p.m. The profile photo that appeared while Rodden drafted the post resembled that of GlomarResponder, which posted at 1:15pm.
Caught in 8k.
that cracka 100% gets nervous any time a high school lets out. Goddamn.
