When you think about ASMR videos, you may imagine the sounds of low, whispering voices and nails tapping into a microphone meant to help you calm down before bed. But there is nothing relaxing about the Trump administration’s recent incursion into the genre, a video that the White House’s social-media team captioned, “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight,” and posted across platforms on Tuesday. In it, immigration authorities shackle several men before they board a deportation flight leaving from Seattle. In the absence of any talking, the rumbling of an airplane waiting to take off and the rattling of chains as the detainees get dragged around stand out — the MAGA equivalent of the sounds of chewing or crinkling paper.
This video horrified plenty of people, who called it “dehumanizing,” “inhumane,” and “vile” — and that’s exactly the reaction that whatever zillennial Stephen Miller wannabe running the account was going for. The post serves a dual purpose: It triggers the libs while sending a message to extremely online, far-right trolls that some of their own are in power now. And they are downright gleeful about it, sharing and signal-boosting the post as they celebrate the brutality of the current sweeping deportations. “Haha wow,” South African immigrant and billionaire troll Elon Musk replied, quote-tweeting the video. The unelected broligarch, who’s adored by far-right communities online and has surrounded himself with other shitposters in his quest to dismantle federal agencies, has his own well-documented extremist and anti-immigration views — just remember how during Trump’s inauguration, Musk raised his arm in a gesture resembling a Nazi salute. Former Breitbart London editor and far-right figure Raheem Kassam replied on Instagram, “Lmfao the lib mental breakdowns here are amazzzzzing.” Over on Musk’s X, right-wing accounts said the stunt was “fucking hilarious,” that they would “cry happy tears” over the video, and that it is proof that “we live in the BEST timeline.”
A similar post drew instant backlash — and effusive right-wing praise — when it went up on Valentine’s Day. The White House shared a bubblegum-pink card decorated with the floating heads of Trump and Tom Homan, a Project 2025 contributor and the White House’s “border czar” who is helping lead deportation efforts. The card reads, “Roses are red / Violets are blue / Come here illegally / And we’ll deport you.”
Cruelty already was the default mode of the first Trump administration, but as shitposting right-wing influencers have replaced the old conservative guard, the current White House has upped the ante. These memes openly poke fun at the terror and pain they are inflicting on migrant communities across the country. Trump 2.0 is attempting to end birthright citizenship, leaving panic-stricken asylum seekers who are pregnant to wonder whether their children will be left stateless. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have ramped up their arrests since Trump returned to office. Migrants are being detained at a breakneck pace, despite nearly half of them not having a criminal record at all, according to data reviewed by NBC News. (Being in the U.S. without authorization is a civil violation, and yet the administration’s position is that any immigrant without legal status is a “criminal.”) Teachers and students are terrified about the possibility of ICE agents coming to their schools, after the administration directed the agency to resume arrests at previously off-limits locations. American citizens have even been swept up in immigration raids, increasing fears that people are being targeted solely because of how they look.
The administration is also seeking to hold more than 30,000 migrants at a tent city in Guantanamo Bay. Among the more than 175 men who have already been shipped to the camp in Cuba, there are migrants with no criminal record. Some of them are being held in the very same cells that once were used to detain people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda. Advocates say these migrants are unable to access legal counsel or communicate with their loved ones, sparking fears that they’ll be the next “forever prisoners,” like the 15 wartime detainees who remain imprisoned on the island and are awaiting trial after enduring years of torture. Other immigrants already have been deported, and not to their countries of origin, but to places like Panama and Costa Rica. There, hundreds of migrants from Asian, African, and Middle Eastern countries say they’ve been locked up and stripped of their passports and means of communication, the New York Times reports.
At this rate, our “For You” pages will soon be filled with “get ready with me to guard migrants at Guantanamo’s concentration camp” videos. But beyond the winking at neo-Nazis, there is another danger in these posts: that the memeification of this horrific treatment of immigrants will lead us to complacency and desensitize the American people to the real human suffering before us. Do not fall for it, and do not let history repeat itself.