US : Trumpstagram is Slate’s pop-up blog that close-reads Instagram accounts in the Trump orbit. For most visitors to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Instagram account, the first question it will raise is: Why does the U.S. Customs and Border Protection have an Instagram account? The use of other social media services seems understandable for an unglamorous federal agency—Twitter offers a fast, seamless way to make announcements; Facebook offers a massive audience and a venue for queries. But Instagram? At a moment when photos of your agency’s doings are being used as supporting evidence for allegations of state-sponsored child abuse, what good could a photo-sharing platform possibly do for your public image?
The answer lies in the profound distance between the public image of today’s CBP and the image it presents on Instagram—a distance longer than the U.S.-Mexico border and wider than the Rio Grande. If an alien landed on Earth today and tried to get a sense of CBP based on its Instagram feed, she might guess that it’s a place where cowboys go to help dogs capture mangoes and papayas before those fruits commit any crimes on U.S. soil, or a rescue organization that sends supplies to needy people who live inside the Statue of Liberty.
