1. United States
2. Iowa
3. Letter

Why Is the White House Turning Deportation Into a Video Game? I am writing to ask you to publicly oppose the White House's decision to launch a taxpayer-funded arcade game that turns the arrest of immigrants into entertainment, and to press for accountability over the use of official government resources for partisan messaging. On Thursday, September 3, 2026, the Trump administration launched a set of five low-resolution arcade games on the official White House website and on a matching federal domain, arcade.gov, both built and hosted with taxpayer resources. Two of the five games center on immigration enforcement. One, called “Rio Run” and modeled on the classic game Snake, has players “patrol the line” along the Rio Grande, gathering up “crossers” rendered as pixelated figures who are then shown in orange jumpsuits, with the player's score tied to how many people they catch. A White House official told CNN the arcade was built to contrast a culture of “fun and winning” with what the official called the “dark socialist vision” of the president's opponents. This is not an isolated incident. It follows a pattern flagged months earlier, when Senator Mark Warner and 23 Senate colleagues wrote to OMB Director Russ Vought documenting that, beginning September 30, 2025, multiple federal agencies — including HUD, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Agriculture — posted partisan political banners on official government websites, which the senators said violated Section 715 of P.L. 118-47's ban on using federal funds for propaganda, along with the Anti-Lobbying Act and the Hatch Act. This is not only immigrant rights advocates raising alarms. Nonpartisan ethics observers and lawmakers have also raised concerns about the blurring of official government communication with campaign-style political promotion on federal .gov domains — resources funded by every taxpayer regardless of party, meant to serve and inform the public, not to score partisan points with our money. Immigrant rights groups, including the Frontera Federation in Eagle Pass, Texas, and San Diego's AMIGOS community, have separately called the game dehumanizing. I pay taxes to fund a government that serves all of us, not a tool built to turn the arrest of human beings into a leaderboard. It turns my stomach to imagine a child clicking onto an official U.S. government website and playing a game where the objective is to catch and detain people rendered as pixelated targets. That is not public information, and it is not public service — it is my money being spent to normalize cruelty as entertainment, and it should offend anyone regardless of where they stand on immigration policy. I am asking you to: ● Publicly condemn the use of the official White House website and arcade.gov for this content, and call for its removal. ● Join or support the oversight effort led by Senator Warner and Senate colleagues demanding that OMB Director Russ Vought enforce Section 715 of P.L. 118-47, the Anti-Lobbying Act, and the Hatch Act against this specific site — or, if you serve in the House, introduce companion legislation requiring the same accountability. ● Request a Government Accountability Office review of how taxpayer funds were used to build and host arcade.gov, and whether that spending was authorized for partisan promotional content. This isn't a rhetorical question. The White House knew exactly what it was doing when it built a video game out of deportations, and it's happening on public property, with public money, because no one with the power to stop it has done so yet. You can be the one who does. Thank you for taking the time to read this and for considering action.