The Donald Trump administration presents one of its main policies, the fight against illegal immigration, as entertainment. This can be seen in a video released on Monday on social media by the Department of Homeland Security.
It is a one-minute montage showing raids and detentions of irregular migrants in the United States. However, these sequences are interspersed with appearances of characters from the Pokémon universe. For example, Ash Ketchum, the series protagonist, who usually catches these creatures by throwing 'Poké Balls', a graphic resource that is also used to transition to sequences of people, immobilized or detained.
"We have to catch them all", or "Gotta catch 'em all," is the text that introduces the video, calling on citizens to join what is presented as an adventure. The montage reinforces this idea by also presenting photos of detained immigrants as collectible cards from the same series, accompanied by the crimes they would be accused of.
Two weeks ago, the White House shared an image of a Labubu, a Chinese doll with worldwide popularity, inspired by a deported Guatemalan migrant. Other times, it has been the president himself who has trivialized a public issue that causes suffering. At the end of February, he shared a video made with AI on his social media accounts, presenting Gaza, where Israel has killed tens of thousands of people since the Hamas terrorist attack, as a luxury resort between luxury and dystopia.