White House launches MAGA arcade games as rights groups call them dehumanising
United States President Donald Trump’s White House on Thursday unveiled a website of classic arcade games with a Make America Great Again (MAGA) theme, in which players can deport migrants and build a border wall.
Rights groups criticised the release as the administration intensifies arrests and deportations of undocumented migrants. One title, Rio Run—an update of Snake—shows a digital version of border official Tom Homan chasing migrants of different skin colours beside the Rio Grande.
Another, based on Tetris and called Build the Wall, tells players to “protect the border from the coming horde.” A third has players collect nets for so-called Trump accounts, investment pots with a $1,000 deposit for children born from 2025 to 2028.
The White House account on X posted a video using a MAGA logo styled after Sega. “CAN’T STOP WINNING. Build the wall. Deport. Fill a Trump Account,” it said. In a statement to AFP the White House called the site an effort to tell the president’s story in a way that resonates with Americans and to contrast “a culture of fun and winning” with what it called a dark socialist vision from Democrats.
Amerika Garcia Grewal of the Frontera Federation in Eagle Pass, Texas, said the administration had been playing games with people’s lives for years and had now made a video game of it. Adriana Jasso of AMIGOS San Diego Community said the arcade format showed a lack of seriousness and presented migration as a game when it is not, including for people who die in detention.
Trump campaigned on expelling millions of undocumented migrants and has moved to speed deportations and cut border crossings. The White House has long used social-media stunts to needle opponents. The dispute here is not whether the games are polished. It is whether state power should package arrests and a wall as entertainment. Supporters will read them as humour and messaging. Critics read them as a decision to turn other people’s removal into a score. That gap will not be closed by a high score.
