Twenty-five years after Balbir Singh Sodhi was murdered because of how he looked, a federal agency should understand the power of its words, the stereotypes they can reinforce and the divisiveness they ignite.
On September 15, 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi was helping a landscaper plant flowers around his gas station in Mesa, Arizona, a tribute to the lives lost to terrorism three days earlier. Frank Silva Roque, fresh from ranting about immigrants at a bar, drove to that gas station and shot Sodhi five times with a .380 handgun, killing him. Roque wanted revenge for 9/11 and racially profiled Balbir as an Arab Muslim because of his turban, beard, and clothing. Roque then fired at the home of a local Afghan family, drove ten miles to another station, and shot at (and missed) a Lebanese-American clerk. Afterward, he bragged at a bar that police were “investigating the murder of a turban-head down the street.”
This was the first post-9/11 federal hate crime — the victim a Sikh-American, mistaken for Arab Muslim. A few years later, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) launched national community engagement efforts on articles of faith, including posters on Sikh articles of faith. Their first principle: “show RESPECT” and “do no harm.” I was part of the effort supporting that work. It wasn’t perfect, but it helped unify a nation struggling to rebuild while holding onto its ideals.
Government credibility isn’t a birthright, it’s earned sentence by sentence, and it can be spent recklessly in a single post. Words were chosen carefully then, because someone at DHS understood a federal agency doesn’t speak the way an angry man at a bar speaks.
Earlier this month, on September 9, 2026, two days before the 25th anniversary of 9/11, DHS published, then deleted, a different kind of message. It featured an AI-generated image of a turbaned, bearded man labeled “Mr. Singh,” confronted by a DHS-branded Optimus Prime, over the words “America for Americans. Get off our roads; you don’t know how to drive, Mr.; Singh” and “Self-deport or find out.”
“Singh” is one of the most common surnames among Sikh Americans. Whatever the intended target, DHS said it referenced a specific driver facing charges; the imagery reached for the same shorthand that got Balbir killed in 2001— a beard, a turban, a name standing in for a threat. When backlash came, DHS didn’t walk it back, calling the criticism “nonsensical drivel” and “faux outrage.” That second choice of words matters as much as the first.
25 years apart, two ways an agency can talk to the country it serves. One asks people to lead with respect and do no harm. The other reaches for a stereotype as a punchline, then dismisses those who recognized it. The post came down. The pattern it revealed did not.
As a DHS veteran of over 14 years, I feel shame, disappointment and concern knowing some will use this as another excuse for violence, targeting people for their appearance or faith. Words from a federal agency are never just words — they’re instructions on who counts as “American.” After Balbir Singh Sodhi, DHS should know exactly what those instructions can cost.
Kareem Shora retired following 26 years focusing on national security and civil rights, including service as former Acting Director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, and supervisory roles in DHS’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL). He also served with FEMA and the State Department’s Counter Terrorism Bureau. He is a recognized expert in violence prevention, having led federal initiatives on targeted violence and terrorism prevention while building bridges between government, policymakers, and civil society. Now COO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), he has testified before Congress and worked extensively at the intersection of policy, human rights, and violence prevention. He is a member of The Steady State.
Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.
This is much-appreciated: a voice of decency. I wish every American voter could see this as Nov. 3 approaches.
Of course the regime knows that its use of racist and cultural stereotypes incites hatred and violence. That is the despicable point...to set people at each other, but with "plausible deniability" of actual causation. Yet we have seen this deadly game way, way too often from the current regime to have even a shadow of a doubt that this messaging is anything but deliberately intended to create harm, even death. Those who draw up and propagate these messages must be held to account someday, when justice and rule of law is credibly restored to America.