Trump’s White House releases deportation video games

Rights groups criticised the White House for the gaming website.

“Makes me sick. They’ve been playing games with people’s lives for years, now they’ve made a video game of what they’re doing,” Amerika Garcia Grewal, co-director of the Frontera Federation in Eagle Pass, Texas, told AFP.

The game designers “have lost touch with what it means to be human and care for others.”

Adriana Jasso, programme coordinator for AMIGOS San Diego Community, who works at the border, said the arcade-style games showed a fundamental “lack of seriousness” from the administration.

“The cruelty, the extremity of the administration … is no longer surprising,” she said. 

The White House seems intent on dehumanising and ridiculing migrants, even as people die in detention centres, she said.

“This presents the issue as if it were a game, when in fact it is not.”

Trump campaigned on a promise to expel millions of undocumented migrants and has taken several actions since returning to power aimed at speeding up deportations and reducing border crossings.

His White House meanwhile has long used social media stunts to ram home its points and troll liberal opponents, and has sparked a backlash from several artists by using their music without permission.