A Texas Observer exposé from last week revealed that James Rodden, an attorney for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, has been running a Twitter account full of some not-so-impartial comments about immigration.
The account in question uses the Twitter handle @GlomarResponder and boasts over 17,000 followers. First created in 2012, the account has a long history of tweeting out various xenophobic and racist remarks. In one post, the writer expresses disdain for the Civil Rights movement of 1964. In another, he proposes feeding migrants to an industrial tree shredder. Clearly he didn’t realize these posts would soon come back to haunt him.
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The backstory: When word of ICE raids began to spread on social media the day after Trump’s inauguration, GlomarResponder created several X posts indicating that he worked for ICE. This detail would catch the eye of Steven Monaceli, an investigative reporter for the Texas Observer. He shortly began digging into GlomarResponder’s post history and found that, for an anonymous account that spouts White supremacist ideology, there was also a surprising amount about the poster’s personal life. The poster revealed many things about himself, such as his employment history, including military background, places he’s resided, details about his spouse, height, fashion choices, and manner of speech.
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All these details led Monaceli to narrow his search to one James Joseph Rodden, a 44-year-old assistant chief counsel for ICE in Dallas, Texas. In November 2021, Rodden, along with several other federal employees, filed a class action lawsuit contesting the mandate for federal workers to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Glomar posted about being involved a similar lawsuit.
Glomar regularly posted about being an armorer in the Marine Corps and working for the Border Patrol. Rodden’s LinkedIn corresponds with these details. Glomar posts about wearing fancy tailored suits when attending court and shaving his head due to male pattern baldness. Here is a photo of Rodden at his job in the courthouse. I could go on, but if you still have doubts, I recommend you read Steven Monaceli’s article.
The fact that someone whose job it is to act fairly and impartially would be so careless as to not only run a Twitter account conveying their anti-immigrant sentiment, but to openly discuss their own personal life on the account is either pure stupidity or plain egotism. Let’s hope his employers see how much of a conflict of interest this is and boot him out.
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