Migrants Advocates Are Taking To The Virtual World To Teach People How To Deal With Immigration Operations

Activists are turning to the virtual world to teach people how to handle encounters with immigration agents as raids escalate across the United States. They're using two games especially popular with young players and gamers — Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto V — to educate gamers about their rights when dealing with immigration agents in real life.

During a virtual event in late November, the organization New Save Collective, a group of about a dozen gamers with backgrounds in activism and organizing, held a scavenger hunt in Fortnite in collaboration with content creators to spread their message.

"Most of us are immigrants, or children of immigrants, or children of refugees," says one organizer who goes by PitaBreadFace online and spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity. "We're here, in this political moment, to build some sense of belonging but also move people toward a shared purpose that everyone seems pretty hungry for."

The initiative was launched to counter the push the U.S. military has openly made to use games as a recruitment tool, similar to efforts by immigration agencies in recent months.

In October, as reported by a WIRED investigation, the Department of Homeland Security posted an image mimicking marketing for the Halo series. "Finishing this fight," the agency's official account tweeted a reference to Halo 3's tagline alongside an image reading "Destroy the Flood," which alluded to the game's premise of fighting its antagonists.

DHS has also leaned on a globally known video game to win over public approval. The agency has riffed on Pokémon's "gotta catch 'em all" tagline, even posting a video of ICE agents destroying property and making arrests, edited using the show's iconic opening song.

PitaBreadFace says he first stepped into digital organizing inside gaming spaces to bring people together around something they already shared, a love of games.

He argues that "the right has built some pretty strong institutions within gaming and turned the social side of these platforms into a weapon," citing Gamergate as an example. "The makeup and culture of gaming are shifting, but we haven't built the same kind of institutions that the right, or other toxic forces, have," he told WIRED.

A spokesperson previously told The Hill that DHS "will reach people where they are with content they can relate to and understand, whether that be Halo, Pokémon, The Lord of the Rings, or any other medium."

Games like Halo and other first-person shooters already come with built-in themes around "protect the homeland," Anosh Polticoal told WIRED." He also noted that some people in GTA role-play scenes are officers or lawyers in real life, and said he preferred to go by his screen name for safety.

"I think ICE has seen that as an opportunity to reach an audience that is already engaged in what they may feel is similar work. We want to make sure our message shows up in those same places — maybe you are not an immigrant, but someone in your life, in your community, definitely is," he added.