After using the original Pokémon theme song in a montage of ICE raids, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is using another popular video game franchise to promote itself on social media: Halo. This morning, the DHS posted an image featuring Halo characters, a Warthog vehicle from the games, and the text “DESTROY THE FLOOD” and a link to ICE’s recruitment website. The DHS captioned the post, “finishing this fight.”
Like with its Pokémon-themed post, which was captioned, “Gotta Catch ‘Em All,” the DHS’s Halo post implicitly compares immigrants to creatures from video games — this time, the parasitic alien species called the Flood.
Microsoft declined to comment about the DHS’s post, and didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the White House’s and GameStop’s posts. The Pokémon Company International, in response to Pokémon being associated with Trump’s mass deportation campaign, previously said in a statement to The Daily Beast that “our company was not involved in the creation or distribution of this content, and permission was not granted for the use of our intellectual property.”
Correction, October 27th: The Pokémon Company International provided the statement to The Daily Beast, not Nintendo, as we originally stated.
