Immigration Game Attacked, Publisher Fires Back

Originally published by the GamePolitics blog

In recent months, GamePolitics has been tracking the development of ICED [I Can End Deportation], a serious game designed to publicize the issues faced by immigrants in the United States. The final version launched earlier this month.

Published by human rights organization Breakthrough, ICED examines immigration issues from the perspective of the immigrant. This is, of course, a hot-button political issue these days, so it’s not surprising that ICED has generated some controversy.

An article on Alex Jones’ InfoWars trashes ICED, terming it “an illegal immigration training game:”

An Indian woman, Mallika Dutt, has released a video game that essentially trains illegal aliens how to sneak across the border and avoid border patrol agents and cops…

For the casual observer, Ms. Dutt comes off as your garden variety liberal “human rights” advocate with a useful penchant for technology. But it is a bit more sinister than that…

As the average Mexican or Latin American does not have access to a video game console, let alone a television, the game is more practically geared toward an effort to inculcate middle class Americans into the belief that illegal immigration is a human rights issue, never mind open borders and the influx of third world people is a globalist plot to turn the United States, soon to become part of a North American Union, into a feudal slave labor gulag based on the China model. It has absolutely nothing to do with human rights.

Asked by GamePolitics to comment on the harsh criticism, Breakthrough’s Mallika Dutt pulled no punches in her response:

ICED – I Can End Deportation is a video game about the lack of due process in the immigration system as it applies to legal permanent residents, asylum seekers and people who are here on valid visas – it’s not about illegal immigrants – as anyone who’s actually bothered to play the game would quickly realize.

One of the characters, Marc, is a war veteran – and many vets, who have legal resident status, have been deported because of unfair immigration laws. Current detention and deportation laws hold people, even legal residents, in detention indefinitely with no access to a judge. Legal residents can be deported for minor crimes – without the opportunity to make a case before a judge.

It’s interesting that those who claim to be supporting the American way of life, are the very ones who are ripping apart due process and fairness in our legal systems…

GP: The immigration issue is surely a controversial one, and there are valid points to be made on both sides. But, frankly, the InfoWars piece smacks of prejudice and stereotyping.

Making it a point to identify Mallika Dutt as “an Indian woman” and asserting that “the average Mexican or Latin American does not have access to a video game console” pretty much show where the article is coming from.

And, note to InfoWars: ICED is not played on a console or a television. It’s a PC game.