NFL asks Homeland Security to remove Brian Dawkins video

The NFL has asked the US Department of Homeland Security to take down a social media video that uses footage of former star Brian Dawkins delivering tackles alongside a message about border protection.

“The league has requested the DHS take down the video,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said Monday.

Posted Sunday, the video opens with Dawkins walking out before a game and chanting, “The time has come.” It then cuts to a montage of tackles from his playing career. The DHS caption reads, “Our time has come.” The Guardian reported that the post appeared in the context of a social media account’s claim that a “huge migrant caravan” was approaching the United States’ southern border. Al Jazeera described the video as showing the agency’s readiness to protect the border against a purported caravan.

Dawkins said he had not authorized DHS to use his image, according to The Guardian, which cited a text he sent to ESPN. “I have very respectfully not given permission,” he wrote.

Dawkins played 16 NFL seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles and Denver Broncos before retiring in 2011. A nine-time Pro Bowler, he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2018. Al Jazeera reported that the montage of his tackles was set to heavy metal music.

The Guardian reported that DHS has previously used US sports imagery in its social media posts. In 2025, an agency post touted plans for an immigration detention center in Indiana dubbed “Speedway Slammer.” The post also included an AI-generated image of an IndyCar-style vehicle in front of a jail. The car bore the No. 5 used by Pato O’Ward, then the racing series’ only Mexican driver, and had “ICE” stamped on it.

O’Ward and IndyCar officials were surprised by the post, The Guardian reported. “It caught a lot of people off guard. Definitely caught me off guard,” O’Ward said at the time. “I was just a little bit shocked at the coincidences of that and, you know, of what it means… I don’t think it made a lot of people proud, to say the least.”

Al Jazeera reported that President Donald Trump has made immigration central to his second term, calling migration across the border from Mexico an “invasion” and deploying federal forces in US cities to detain undocumented people. During his first term, he sent thousands of troops to the Mexican border as a caravan of Central American migrants traveled north. Critics called that deployment an overreaction and a political stunt ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, according to Al Jazeera.